Irving Wallace Books in Order

A lively nonfiction collection about the real people who inspired famous fictional characters, from Sherlock Holmes to Captain Ahab. Wallace turns literary detective and shows how strange real lives can be even more memorable than invention.

Wallace profiles American oddballs, rebels, and cranks who refused to fit in. These short biographical sketches celebrate people whose wild ideas and stubborn independence pushed them far outside respectable society.

A full scale portrait of P. T. Barnum, tracing how he turned spectacle, publicity, and nerve into a new kind of American entertainment empire. It's part biography, part history of show business.

Philip Fleming looks respectable from the outside, but a private problem is eating away at his marriage and self-control. Wallace builds a tense, intimate novel around secrecy, shame, and the cost of living two lives.

A sex researcher arrives in an affluent California community to study the private lives of married women, and the interviews start stirring up real trouble. Wallace uses the survey to expose desire, boredom, fantasy, and marital strain.

This biographical narrative follows Ann Eliza Young, one of Brigham Young's wives, as she breaks from Mormon polygamy and fights back in public. Wallace turns a 19th century divorce and reform battle into fast moving history.

As six new Nobel laureates head to Stockholm, ambition, romance, and Cold War intrigue close in around the awards ceremony. Wallace mixes celebrity, science, politics, and scandal into a globe spanning suspense novel.

After a sudden constitutional crisis, Senator Douglass Dilman becomes the first Black president of the United States. Wallace follows the racism, power struggles, and personal strain that greet him the moment he takes office.

A group of outsiders travel to a remote Polynesian island to study a society with very different ideas about sex, marriage, and jealousy. What begins as research turns into a challenge to nearly every belief they brought with them.

This nonfiction collection gathers Wallace's magazine pieces about unusual people, curious places, and stranger than fiction episodes. It shows the reporter behind the novelist, always chasing the human detail that makes a story stick.

At a tense Paris summit, the leaders of the world's major nuclear powers meet while conspirators and private desperations close in around them. Wallace turns diplomacy into a high pressure thriller about assassination, intrigue, and catastrophe.

Wallace breaks down how The Prize was conceived, researched, drafted, and finally written. It's a practical, candid look at how one big commercial novel takes shape, including the false starts and grind readers usually never see.

A notorious erotic novel becomes the center of a courtroom and media firestorm after a brutal crime. Wallace uses the case to dig into censorship, free speech, public outrage, and the uneasy line between literature and obscenity.

In this Cold War thriller, the Soviets train a woman to replace the American First Lady with a near perfect double. The setup is outrageous on purpose, and Wallace wrings tension from every secret slip and deception.

Wallace turns to nonfiction to profile scandalous women from history whose love lives shocked their own eras. The book is gossipy, historical, and full of stories about sex, power, reputation, and survival.

When a new gospel said to be written by Jesus' brother is discovered, the find threatens churches, publishers, and believers alike. A public relations expert is pulled into a maze of faith, forgery, scholarship, and power.

Four obsessed men kidnap movie star Sharon Fields, convinced fantasy will somehow become reality once they have her. Wallace builds a grim, disturbing thriller about celebrity worship, entitlement, and the violence hiding inside obsession.

Not a standard almanac, this bestseller packs history, odd facts, forgotten stories, predictions, and offbeat lists meant to be browsed for fun. It is a reference book with the energy of a conversation that keeps taking strange turns.

This biography follows Harriet T. Beckert, an opera singer who left city life behind and became a rancher in North Dakota. Wallace is drawn to the sheer improbability of her reinvention and the grit it required.

An ambitious FBI director pushes a constitutional amendment that would suspend the Bill of Rights in a national emergency. Behind the public campaign lies a far darker plan, and Wallace turns it into a paranoid political thriller.

After inheriting his father's media empire, Edward Armstead becomes obsessed with turning the New York Record into the biggest paper in town. Soon he is not just chasing headlines but trying to shape, manipulate, and even create them.

This classic compendium gathers hundreds of quirky, provocative, and darkly funny lists on history, crime, sex, politics, and pop culture. It is the kind of book you open at random and keep reading far longer than intended.

The second volume returns to Wallace and David Wallechinsky's winning formula, odd facts, hidden history, memorable lists, and stories too strange for standard reference books. It is built for dipping in, wandering, and finding something unexpected.

More than a sequel, this follow up doubles down on unusual facts, eccentric rankings, and irresistible categories. It keeps the original's mix of humor, shock value, and genuine curiosity about the stranger corners of history and culture.

Written with Amy Wallace, this biography tells the extraordinary lives of Chang and Eng Bunker, the original Siamese twins. It follows their fame, marriages, family life, and struggle to live as fully as possible in a gawking world.

A scientist's discovery hints at longer life, and competing powers want the secret for themselves. Set largely in Venice, the novel turns one impossible breakthrough into a chase story about greed, secrecy, and who gets to own a miracle.

This collection rounds up predictions from scientists, politicians, writers, and other forecasters, then lets readers weigh what sounds wise, wild, or weirdly plausible. It is a time capsule of futures people once thought were coming.

This reference book sketches the romantic and sexual histories of famous figures from politics, art, religion, and entertainment. It is designed less as a single argument than as a shelf of provocative mini biographies.

Wallace, David Wallechinsky, and Amy Wallace collect unusual facts that feel too telling to dismiss as trivia. The result is a browseable grab bag of little known stories, curiosities, and sharp historical sidelights.

When the Vatican announces that the Virgin Mary will appear again at Lourdes, pilgrims, skeptics, reporters, and the desperate all converge on the shrine. Wallace uses the countdown to explore faith, illness, ambition, and spectacle.

The third Book of Lists keeps the series moving with more odd rankings, buried facts, and conversation starting curiosities. Like the earlier volumes, it is part reference book, part trivia rabbit hole, and part social snapshot.

After a historian dies investigating Hitler's last days, his daughter follows the trail into Berlin and an alternate history nightmare. Wallace turns the mystery into a hunt for hidden bunkers, buried evidence, and a Nazi secret that refuses to stay dead.

Wallace dives into sex therapy, focusing on the people who seek help for intimate problems and the controversial methods used to treat them. It is part relationship drama, part debate about desire, healing, and what counts as therapy.

Set around Chicago's lavish Everleigh Club, this historical novel follows desire, money, and scandal inside one of America's most famous brothels. Wallace uses the setting to show how glamour and exploitation can share the same room.

President Matthew Underwood falls for the woman who leads the small nation of Lampang, and private desire quickly becomes public danger. Wallace turns the affair into a political scandal with international stakes and plenty of enemies watching.