Jonathan Kellerman Books in Order

This professional volume examines psychological responses to childhood cancer, including the experiences of young patients, adolescents, siblings, and families. Clinical discussion and research reviews address severe illness, bereavement, and the emotional effects of specialized treatments and separation.

Kellerman examines common childhood fears and ways parents can help children respond to them. Written from his background in child psychology, the book focuses on understanding anxiety within family life and supporting children as they face frightening experiences.

Retired child psychologist Alex Delaware is asked to help a young witness to a double murder. Working with detective Milo Sturgis, he tries to recover the girl's memories while uncovering a conspiracy that connects the crime to his own past.

A gravely ill boy disappears from hospital after his parents refuse potentially lifesaving treatment. Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis follow the family's trail, uncovering disturbing beliefs and violent secrets while racing to find a child whose survival depends on help.

A former patient's desperate call brings Alex Delaware to a psychiatric hospital, but the young man has vanished. When police identify him as a suspected serial killer, Alex examines his troubled history to determine whether madness or manipulation explains the accusations.

A series of ritualistically staged murders unsettles Jerusalem and threatens its fragile social balance. Police inspector Daniel Sharavi and his team pursue the killer through a city divided by religious and political tensions, confronting secrets hidden behind its ancient walls.

Alex Delaware encounters former lover Sharon Ransom, who hints that she needs help, then dies in an apparent suicide. Driven by guilt, he investigates her life, uncovering buried family wounds and secrets beneath Southern California's wealthy social circles.

After a teenage sniper attacks a school playground, Alex Delaware helps the traumatized children and questions the shooter's motives. A request from the teenager's father draws him into the dead youth's past, where disturbing patterns point toward a larger plot.

A former patient asks Alex Delaware to protect her mother from the attacker who disfigured her years earlier. When the reclusive woman disappears, Alex must investigate the family's past and determine whether old terror has become a new threat.

A healthy-looking toddler repeatedly arrives at hospital with unexplained symptoms, drawing Alex Delaware into a troubling medical mystery. A physician's murder raises the stakes as he and Milo Sturgis search for connections between the child's suffering and concealed violence.

An anonymous recording begins a campaign of threats and intimidation against Alex Delaware. As harassment escalates, he and Milo Sturgis uncover violent deaths linked by a possible pattern, forcing Alex to understand a stalker's logic before becoming another victim.

Illustrated poems invite children and parents to explore everyday worries through imagination and playful questions. Subjects include conformity and other concerns of growing up, offering a shared way to talk about how children experience the world.

After serving on a serial-killer jury, Lucy Lowell seeks Alex Delaware's help with a recurring nightmare. The dream's emotional power suggests it may preserve a childhood memory, leading Alex to investigate whether a buried crime explains her present distress.

Alex Delaware accepts an invitation to help a scientist organize his papers on a Pacific island. Strange guests and disturbing medical stories soon undermine the promised holiday, prompting him to investigate the hidden purpose behind his host's apparently generous offer.

The unsolved murder of controversial psychologist Hope Devane brings Alex Delaware into an investigation of her carefully compartmentalized life. Her marriage, clinical work, and childhood offer conflicting clues as Alex and Milo Sturgis search for the hatred behind her death.

A diplomat's daughter is murdered during a school outing, with no obvious motive or signs of a struggle. Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis join Israeli inspector Daniel Sharavi to investigate, eventually confronting a conspiracy that demands a dangerous undercover approach.

Twelve-year-old runaway Billy Straight witnesses a brutal murder in Griffith Park and flees into Los Angeles. Detective Petra Connor searches for both the killer and the frightened child, whose precarious life on the streets makes him an increasingly vulnerable witness.

A confined psychiatric patient appears to predict murders outside his institution, baffling Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis. Their investigation links mutilated victims, hospital secrets, and family histories while raising urgent questions about who is directing the violence.

Kellerman draws on his work as a child psychologist to examine severe juvenile violence and psychopathic behavior. The book weighs biological and social explanations, challenges familiar accounts of why children kill, and presents his arguments about recognizing and responding to danger.

The mutilated body of a physician associated with assisted deaths draws Alex Delaware into a disturbing investigation. As he examines the doctor's controversial work and personal history, the search for a killer raises increasingly troubling questions about motives and responsibility.

The murder of former patient Lauren Teague forces Alex Delaware to confront a professional failure he never forgot. His investigation follows her troubled life into psychological experimentation and the sex industry, straining personal relationships while exposing dangerous intersections of money and exploitation.

An anonymous album of crime-scene photographs reopens a murder that haunted Milo Sturgis early in his career. With Alex Delaware's help, he revisits the killing and uncovers secrets reaching into Los Angeles's powerful circles across two decades.

A young artist's murder at her first major exhibition suggests a calculated killer rather than an impulsive attack. Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis link the crime to other artistic victims, following a trail that reaches unexpectedly into Alex's personal life.

Psychologist Jeremy Carrier struggles after his girlfriend's kidnapping and murder leaves him grieving and under suspicion. When similar killings occur, his hospital work offers little refuge, and proving his innocence requires investigating a predator whose crimes keep drawing closer.

This volume pairs two brisk novellas: one set in Santa Fe, where detectives Darrel Two Moons and Steve Katz probe the killing of a loathed art dealer, and one in Boston, where cops investigate the puzzling death of a college basketball star.

A young couple's murder leads Alex Delaware to a therapist fiercely protective of her clients' privacy. Searching the male victim's troubled psychological history brings Alex and Milo Sturgis into a network of professional secrecy, greed, and betrayal.

While investigating a violent gang killing, Petra Connor hears a graduate student's theory linking apparently unrelated unsolved murders. The repeated method and date suggest a hidden serial predator, leaving her little time to act before the pattern repeats.

A former juvenile killer seeks Alex Delaware's help after leaving prison, then is murdered before explaining why. Alex and Milo Sturgis revisit the childhood crime that shocked a community, uncovering unresolved secrets beneath assumptions about punishment and revenge.

Husband‑and‑wife team Jonathan and Faye Kellerman deliver two more short novels: a Berkeley investigation into the assassination of a controversial state representative, and a Nashville case involving a murdered music star and the detectives tied to his past.

Two acting students claim to have survived a brutal abduction, but evidence exposes their story as a hoax. When one is murdered, Alex Delaware's suspicions deepen, drawing him and Milo Sturgis toward a wider pattern of disturbing Los Angeles killings.

Former patient Tanya Bigelow asks Alex Delaware to investigate her aunt's deathbed confession of murder. Vague details make the claim difficult to assess, but a new killing draws Alex and Milo Sturgis into the family's secretive and unsettled past.

Bodies discovered in a Los Angeles marsh suggest a serial killer, but one victim's career as a musician complicates the pattern. Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis investigate her wealthy employers while questioning whether the apparent profile conceals another motive.

Apparently unrelated murders share the use of luxury vehicles but offer little evidence of motive. Beginning with blood in a stolen car, Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis follow a shifting trail through Los Angeles and beyond to identify an elusive killer.

Guest editor Jonathan Kellerman joins the series editors in selecting notable true-crime journalism from the year's reporting. The collection brings together accounts of murder, deception, conspiracy, and investigative failure, emphasizing the real people and circumstances behind criminal events.

Kellerman presents vintage guitars and other stringed instruments from his personal collection through photographs and the stories behind them. The illustrated volume explores their distinctive character and visual beauty, including the Hawaiian guitars that hold a particular fascination for him.

A murdered teacher leaves a recorded account accusing colleagues at an elite prep school of abuse. Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis investigate as privileged families and school officials close ranks, making the truth increasingly difficult and dangerous to expose.

A young couple's bodies are discovered inside an unfinished Los Angeles mansion, staged in a disturbing embrace. Identifying one victim as a womanizing architect gives Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis a growing list of suspects and an increasingly unpredictable investigation.

Estranged half-brothers Moses Reed, an LAPD detective, and Aaron Fox, a private investigator, reluctantly cooperate on a missing student's case. Their contrasting methods and family tensions complicate a search through Los Angeles's world of wealth, celebrity, and concealed danger.

Alex Delaware notices an enigmatic young woman during a final visit to a closing Beverly Hills hotel. When she is found murdered, that fleeting encounter becomes a crucial starting point for an investigation into the secrets behind her identity.

A collaborative thriller that starts with a murder that looks solved, until a wife refuses to accept the easy answer. As different investigators and suspects take the stage, the story keeps changing shape. Each new revelation adds pressure, and nobody's motives are as clean as they seem.

A gruesomely staged murder is followed by similar killings with no obvious connection between the victims. Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis pursue a cryptic clue through the mental-health system, including an institution linked to Alex's own professional past.

A backyard renovation uncovers an infant's decades-old remains, and another nearby discovery deepens the mystery. Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis investigate vanished medical records and long-buried relationships as their search unexpectedly reaches into the protected world of celebrity privilege.

A custody dispute between two sisters becomes increasingly sinister after Alex Delaware is appointed to assess the case. When murder follows and the child disappears, he and Milo Sturgis must untangle the family's dangerous pathology to find her.

Detective Jacob Lev investigates a severed head found in the Hollywood Hills beside a Hebrew message invoking justice. The case leads through Los Angeles, London, and Prague, drawing him into an ancient legend that challenges his understanding of himself and the world.

A stalled investigation into a young woman's murder troubles Milo Sturgis as he turns to another killing. When strange clues connect the cases, psychologist Alex Delaware helps him pursue a calculating criminal who appears intent on manipulating their search.

LAPD detective Jacob Lev struggles with revelations about his family when an unsolved murder draws his personal and professional lives together. The investigation takes him to Paris, where finding a killer means confronting secrets rooted in his own past.

Psychologist Grace Blades has built a successful life after witnessing her parents' violent deaths as a child. Recognizing a new patient from a private encounter draws her into a dangerous investigation that threatens to expose both her past and her secrets.

In 1965, Harvard graduate Malcolm Bluestone visits his movie-star brother in California before beginning law school. The glamorous trip makes him question his carefully arranged future, and a disturbing incident on a film set pushes him toward a different calling.

Alex Delaware encounters actress Zelda Chase years after assessing her young son, then learns she has been found dead following psychiatric treatment. Working with Milo Sturgis, he investigates her death while searching for the missing boy and other vanished victims.

Deputy coroner Clay Edison initially sees a retired professor's death as an accident, but the man's daughter insists he was murdered. Discovering that a colleague died under similar circumstances sends Clay beyond his usual duties into a troubling investigation.

Nearly one hundred years old, Thalia Mars asks Alex Delaware unsettling questions about guilt and criminal behavior. Before she can explain her interest, she dies in her hotel suite, leaving Alex and Milo Sturgis to investigate a lifetime of secrets.

An unidentified, mutilated body appears inside an affluent Los Angeles family's home without an obvious struggle. Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis question the guarded residents and their neighbors, uncovering hidden tensions behind the street's comfortable suburban appearance.

A bridesmaid discovers an unknown woman's body during a chaotic wedding reception, and nobody admits to recognizing her. Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis must untangle the guests' stories to identify the victim and discover why the celebration became a crime scene.

Deputy coroner Clay Edison investigates a child's old skeleton unearthed during demolition of a local park. A businessman wonders whether it could belong to his missing sister, drawing Clay into a family mystery complicated by uncertain memories and buried violence.

Four bodies are discovered arranged inside a limousine at a deserted Bel Air mansion, each apparently killed differently. With no clear connection between the victims, Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis pursue a baffling crime marked by deliberate misdirection.

A wealthy woman pressures the LAPD to reopen the decades-old killing of the mother she never knew. Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis revisit a burned car, scarce evidence and failed investigations, finding that the past still conceals present-day danger.

A naked man's death in a suburban street leads Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis to a murdered woman nearby. Alex recognizes her from a custody case, making the investigation more complicated as they question the victims' identities and connection.

A wealthy photographer is found shot dead after attracting attention for portraits of homeless people living out imagined dreams. Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis investigate whether exploitation, family tensions or another hidden grievance lies behind the killing.

Two wealthy lovers are found dead in a Bel Air swimming pool, leaving little evidence of an intruder. Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis investigate the victims' concealed histories, discovering that one woman's identity may be as elusive as the killer.

The murder of an aspiring actress leads Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis to another Hollywood hopeful, who is then killed by a sniper. More apparently unrelated deaths follow, forcing the investigators to search for a motive beneath the pattern.

A young woman's murder initially seems straightforward until the evidence shifts. When an older woman is found dead in a freezer, Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis uncover connections between the cases and confront a victim from Milo's own past.

A promising teenager is shot and stabbed on a university campus, followed by victims with no apparent connection. Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis search across Los Angeles for the hidden pattern linking a series of deliberately cruel murders.