Larry Bond Books in Order
Explore Larry Bond books in order, with quick summaries, series guides, and where to start across his military thrillers, submarine novels, and collaborations.
Last updated: June 9, 2026
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Publication Order
25 books
Battles of the Third World War
by Larry Bond
1987
This scenario book for the Harpoon system imagines naval clashes in a hypothetical NATO-Soviet war. It offers a series of ready-made encounters for readers and players who like modern fleets, submarines, and Cold War stakes.
Red Phoenix
by Larry Bond
1989
Political turmoil gives North Korea the chance it has been waiting for, and the peninsula erupts into war. Bond follows commanders, pilots, and soldiers through a conflict that could pull the United States, China, and Russia in deeper.
Desert Storm
by Larry Bond
1991
A compact military reference rather than a novel, this book focuses on the forces, equipment, and battlefield organization of Operation Desert Storm. It is aimed at readers who want the structure of the war laid out clearly.
Vortex
by Larry Bond
1991
Afrikaner hardliners seize power in South Africa, revive apartheid politics, and push the region toward war. What starts as a coup becomes a sprawling military crisis involving neighboring states, outside powers, and the danger of nuclear escalation.
Cauldron
by Larry Bond
1993
A European financial crisis turns into a power grab, and old alliances start to fracture fast. As France and its partners push harder, the United States and Eastern Europe are pulled toward a military showdown no one can easily control.
The Enemy Within
by Larry Bond
1996
After spectacular terror attacks throw America into chaos, Peter Thorn and Helen Gray discover the violence is part of a larger Iranian-backed plan. Stopping the campaign means finding the mastermind before the crisis spills into open war.
Day of Wrath
by Larry Bond
1998
Peter Thorn and Helen Gray return when terrorists begin moving nuclear weapons toward the United States. Their search runs through Europe and America, where money, ideology, and betrayal inside their own side make every step harder.
Larry Bond's First Team
by Larry Bond
2004
A tiny off-the-books unit races to recover stolen radioactive material before it can become a dirty bomb. The mission sends the Team across the former Soviet world while an unseen enemy closes in on Honolulu.
Dangerous Ground
by Larry Bond
2005
Grounded from flight duty after a crash, Jerry Mitchell refuses to leave the Navy and starts over in the submarine service. To earn his place, he must survive a brutal captain, a covert mission, and dangers he never expected.
Angels of Wrath
by Larry Bond
2006
The First Team joins an FBI investigation into zealots trying to trigger a religious war through attacks linked to Jerusalem and Iraq. With Mossad in the mix and two plots unfolding at once, trust becomes almost as dangerous as the enemy.
Fires of War
by Larry Bond
2006
A crisis on the Korean peninsula turns deadly when the Team uncovers hidden nuclear weapons and a plan for a much larger strike. They have to move fast before a regional showdown becomes a global catastrophe.
The Mighty Fallen
by Larry Bond
2007
In collaboration with photographer f-stop Fitzgerald, Bond looks at American war memorials through images and short historical notes. The book is about remembrance as much as design, and about how nations carry the cost of war forward.
Soul of the Assassin
by Larry Bond
2008
Bob Ferguson and the First Team head to Italy to catch the legendary killer known only as T-Rex. The hunt opens onto a larger terrorist plot tied to bioweapons, false leads, and enemies who are hard to see until they strike.
Cold Choices
by Larry Bond
2009
A US submarine mission in the Barents Sea ends in a collision that leaves a Russian boat crippled on the bottom. Jerry Mitchell has to save his own crew, reach angry Russian commanders, and keep trapped sailors alive.
Shadows of War
by Larry Bond
2009
Climate change, shortages, and unrest push China toward war, and scientist Josh MacArthur finds himself carrying proof that could wreck Beijing's excuse for invasion. Surviving the first massacres is hard enough, getting the truth out may be harder.
Crash Dive
by Larry Bond
2010
Edited by Bond, this collection brings together nonfiction and historical writing about submarines and the people who serve in them. It ranges from World War II patrols to Cold War shadow games, with the danger of life below the surface never far away.
Edge of War
by Larry Bond
2010
CIA officer Mara Duncan must get Josh MacArthur and a young witness out of shattered Hanoi while Chinese agents hunt them. At the same time, Zeus Murphy plans a desperate strike meant to slow the invasion at sea.
Exit Plan
by Larry Bond
2012
An extraction mission off Iran goes wrong when a minisub fire strands Jerry Mitchell, SEALs, and two key defectors ashore. With patrol boats closing in, they have only one shot at getting out with proof of a nuclear plot.
Shock of War
by Larry Bond
2012
Under secret orders, Major Zeus Murphy hits a Chinese invasion fleet and ends up trapped behind enemy lines. As he fights beside the Vietnamese, Washington battles over whether America will act before the war spreads further.
Blood of War
by Larry Bond
2013
China's invasion of Vietnam grinds onward as famine, weather shocks, and global politics tighten the screws. Josh and Mara stay hunted, Dirk Silas fights at sea, and Zeus Murphy keeps betting everything on bold action.
Shattered Trident
by Larry Bond
2013
Jerry Mitchell witnesses the opening move in a war between China and Vietnam when a Chinese submarine sinks a merchant ship. Soon he is trying to slow both sides before economic collapse or nuclear escalation takes over.
Lash-Up
by Larry Bond
2015
When China begins knocking out American GPS satellites, the US scrambles to turn an unfinished space vehicle into a working weapon. The real battle is not just in orbit, but in the engineering sprint and sabotage on the ground.
Fatal Thunder
by Larry Bond
2016
A stalemated India-Pakistan war hides a rogue plot to strike China with covert nuclear weapons. When former enemy Girish Samant asks for help, Jerry Mitchell is pulled into a race to stop a wider catastrophe.
Red Phoenix Burning
by Larry Bond
2016
North Korea's regime begins to collapse, and the power struggle quickly turns into civil war. As rival factions, outside powers, and weapons of mass destruction come into play, the whole region edges toward disaster.
Arctic Gambit
by Larry Bond
2018
When a US submarine vanishes in Arctic waters, Jerry Mitchell uncovers a Russian plan built around a stealthy nuclear torpedo. Stopping it means going back to sea and trying to prevent nuclear blackmail from turning into war.
Where should I start?
If you want classic large-scale war novels: Red Phoenix → Vortex → Cauldron
If you want submarine action: Dangerous Ground → Cold Choices → Exit Plan → Shattered Trident
If you want covert-ops missions: Larry Bond's First Team → Angels of Wrath → Fires of War → Soul of the Assassin
If you want a continuous near-future war arc: Shadows of War → Edge of War → Shock of War → Blood of War
Author bio
Larry Bond grew up outside St. Paul, Minnesota, and a lot of the things that would shape his later work were already there early, math, machines, military history, and a taste for games that tried to model how conflicts really worked. He graduated from St. Thomas College in 1973 with a degree in quantitative methods, worked as a computer programmer for two years, and then headed into the Navy.
The Navy was not a short detour.
Bond went through Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, entered the service in 1975, graduated the following year, and spent six years on active duty. Four of those years were on a destroyer, and two were on shore duty in the Washington, DC, area. He later served two more years in the Naval Reserve Intelligence Program, then worked as a naval analyst for defense consulting firms around Washington. That mix of operational service and analytic work gave him a close-up view of how military systems function, and how people behave inside them when the pressure gets real.
Before most novel readers knew his name, wargamers did. Bond designed Harpoon, first published in 1980, a naval warfare game built to be playable but also serious about weapons, sensors, and tactics. He later helped design Command at Sea and Fear God & Dreadnought, and in 2004 he was inducted into the Game Manufacturers Association's International Hall of Fame. He has described himself as an avid wargamer and modeler, which tracks.
His writing career started when he collaborated with Tom Clancy on Red Storm Rising. That book became a huge bestseller and helped fix Bond's name to the military-thriller boom of the 1980s, even if his path into fiction was less literary than technical. He came in through expertise, gaming, and analysis, then stayed because the stories could carry all of that without turning into lectures.
Red Phoenix was the book that really showed what he could do in his own lane.
That novel imagines a new war on the Korean peninsula, and it set the pattern for a lot of Bond's later fiction, large political crises, fast-moving military action, and a strong interest in how strategy, logistics, and command decisions shape the fate of ordinary people. Vortex moved the focus to South Africa, where a political breakdown becomes a wider regional war. Cauldron turned a European financial and political crisis into military confrontation. In The Enemy Within and Day of Wrath, he followed Peter Thorn and Helen Gray through terrorism plots that strike much closer to home.
Later, Bond went back under the surface with the Jerry Mitchell novels, beginning with Dangerous Ground, where a grounded pilot starts over in the submarine service. Books like Cold Choices, Shattered Trident, Fatal Thunder, and Arctic Gambit follow Jerry as he grows from junior officer to senior commander. Bond also wrote the Larry Bond's First Team novels and, with Jim DeFelice, the Red Dragon Rising series, which pushes his interest in geopolitics into a hotter, near-future setting shaped by climate stress and great-power rivalry.
Across all of it, Bond tends to care as much about responsibility as hardware.
That is probably why his novels usually feel less like gadget catalogs and more like pressure cookers. The ships, aircraft, missiles, and command systems matter, but so do the people trapped inside the chain of decisions around them. He has also edited the submarine collection Crash Dive and worked with photographer f-stop Fitzgerald on The Mighty Fallen, a nonfiction book about American war memorials.
Bond lives in Virginia, outside Washington, DC, with his wife Jeanne. The through line in his career is easy to see, Navy service, analytical thinking, game design, and a long-running interest in how wars begin, spread, and are sometimes stopped at the last possible minute.
Edited by
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