Erik Hanberg Books in Order

If you want big-idea science fiction: The Lead Cloak → The Iron Harvest → The Tin Whistle
If you want a fast standalone caper: Semi/Human
If you want mystery with family banter: The Saints Go Dying → The Marinara Murders → The Con Before Christmas
If you serve on a nonprofit board: The Little Book of Boards
If fundraising and outreach are your focus: The Little Book of Gold → The Little Book of Likes

Erik Hanberg was born in Tacoma, Washington, and he grew up there. That hometown thread still runs through a lot of his work and public life. He has spent years writing books, helping nonprofits, working in media, and serving in local office, all while staying closely tied to Tacoma.

Writing started early. In a 2026 post on his own site, Hanberg said the story really begins in sixth grade, when he wrote eighty pages and thought he had finished a novel.

He kept at it.

Before many readers found him through his fiction or nonprofit books, Hanberg had already built a career in community work. He worked in nonprofit leadership and fundraising, helped run media and arts projects, and later served more than twelve years as a commissioner with Parks Tacoma. That practical experience gave him a lot of material, and it also shaped his voice: direct, curious, and interested in how people work inside larger systems.

That background feeds straight into books like The Little Book of Gold, The Little Book of Likes, and The Little Book of Boards. They are written for small nonprofits, especially the kind where one person seems to be doing six jobs at once. Readers tend to like them because they skip the foggy jargon and get to the point, whether the topic is fundraising, social media, or board governance.

Then there is the fiction.

In The Lead Cloak, The Iron Harvest, and The Tin Whistle, Hanberg builds the Lattice, a future technology that makes privacy almost impossible. These books ask big questions about surveillance, memory, power, and whether a useful tool can become too dangerous to keep. People who enjoy idea-driven science fiction usually come away talking about the worldbuilding, but the books also move like thrillers.

He shifts gears neatly in his mysteries. The Saints Go Dying begins with a hacker turned detective chasing a serial killer in Los Angeles. The Marinara Murders and The Con Before Christmas open the door to a more offbeat mother-and-son mystery partnership, mixing crime, family friction, and humor. Later, Semi/Human takes his interest in technology in a different direction, following a teen coder, a runaway self-driving truck, and a heist in a world where automation has pushed people aside.

A lot of Hanberg's work comes back to the same question: what happens when institutions, tools, and ordinary human mess collide?

That shows up whether he is writing about a nonprofit board, a police investigation, or a society held together by a machine that knows too much. He seems especially interested in systems people rely on every day, and in the way those systems can help, trap, or expose them. Even when the setup is high concept, the appeal is usually pretty human. People are trying to do good work, clean up a mistake, save a relationship, or simply get through the day.

Today, Hanberg still wears a few different hats. He works at KNKX Public Radio as Director of Marketing, Communications, and Government Relations, and he has co-founded local podcast and media projects along the way. He lives in Tacoma with his wife Mary and their two children, which makes him one of those writers whose books and day job both seem to grow out of the same place: community life.