Leonard Goldberg Books in Order
Browse Leonard Goldberg books in order, with quick summaries, series guides for Joanna Blalock and Sherlock Holmes, and easy where-to-start picks.
Last updated: July 7, 2026
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Publication Order
21 books
Transplant
by Leonard Goldberg
1980
Goldberg's debut turns transplant medicine into a nightmare when a young woman is discovered to be a universal organ donor. Suddenly her rare biology makes her valuable to exactly the wrong people.
The Cure
by Leonard Goldberg
1982
When a promising new treatment draws desperate attention, the fight quickly spills from the hospital into the courtroom. This early Goldberg thriller mixes medical ethics, personal risk, and legal suspense.
Deadly Medicine
by Leonard Goldberg
1992
At a major Los Angeles hospital, nurses are being murdered and the usual police work is not enough. Joanna Blalock brings sharp medical insight to the case and finds herself close to a killer inside the system.
A Deadly Practice
by Leonard Goldberg
1994
A doctor is murdered in the operating room, then more hospital staff start dying in ways that feel anything but random. Joanna Blalock follows the trail through Memorial Hospital before the killer reaches her.
Deadly Care
by Leonard Goldberg
1996
Unexplained deaths, a faceless corpse, and a flood of baffling hospital cases push Joanna Blalock into dangerous territory. Her search for answers uncovers a deadly conspiracy built on profit and patient care.
Deadly Harvest
by Leonard Goldberg
1997
When Joanna's sister is stricken by a devastating virus and needs a liver transplant, Joanna turns to a company that finds organs with unsettling speed. What starts as a family emergency opens onto a brutal trade in human body parts.
Deadly Exposure
by Leonard Goldberg
1998
Joanna Blalock joins a scientific mission aboard a ship off Alaska when a deadly organism breaks loose. Quarantine, suspicious deaths, and a possible killer on board turn the voyage into a fight for survival.
Lethal Measures
by Leonard Goldberg
2000
A deadly explosion in Los Angeles points to a plot against the visiting president, and Joanna Blalock is pulled into the forensic hunt. As evidence disappears and more bombs threaten, her lab becomes part of the battlefield.
Fatal Care
by Leonard Goldberg
2001
Three baffling deaths lead Joanna Blalock to a glamorous biotech firm with a breakthrough treatment for clogged arteries. The science looks miraculous, but the bodies keep piling up.
Brainwaves
by Leonard Goldberg
2002
A scientist on the verge of unlocking human memory appears to have killed herself, but Joanna Blalock is not convinced. To expose the truth, she and Jake Sinclair must use the victim's own research against a killer.
Fever Cell
by Leonard Goldberg
2003
When a suspected terrorist turns up dead at LAX and a patient arrives with smallpox, Dr. Joanna Blalock is trapped inside a hospital quarantine. She has to survive the outbreak and help uncover a bioterror plot before it spreads.
Patient One
by Leonard Goldberg
2012
After a state dinner poisoning sends the president and other dignitaries to a Los Angeles hospital, terrorists seize the ward. ER doctor David Ballineau and nurse Carolyn Ross become the last line between their patients and catastrophe.
Plague Ship
by Leonard Goldberg
2013
What begins as a family cruise turns into a floating nightmare when a virulent strain of bird flu spreads through the ship. Dr. David Ballineau and nurse Carolyn Ross must contain the outbreak while fear pushes passengers toward mutiny.
The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes
by Leonard Goldberg
2017
In 1914 London, nurse Joanna Blalock is drawn into a dangerous investigation with Dr. Watson and his son after witnessing a man's fall. Soon she learns the secret behind her own gifts for observation and deduction.
A Study in Treason
by Leonard Goldberg
2018
When a secret treaty disappears from a locked country house, Joanna Blalock is asked to solve an impossible case. The missing document could damage Britain at the worst possible moment.
The Disappearance of Alistair Ainsworth
by Leonard Goldberg
2019
A frightened doctor brings Joanna news of a missing cryptographer who may be in enemy hands. With wartime secrets at stake, Joanna and the Watsons race to find Alistair Ainsworth before Germany can use him.
The Art of Deception
by Leonard Goldberg
2020
Someone is slashing portraits of women across London, but the damage suggests a search, not simple vandalism. When murder follows, Joanna and the Watsons uncover a mystery hidden behind the paintings.
The Abduction of Pretty Penny
by Leonard Goldberg
2021
A missing actress and a new string of Whitechapel murders draw Joanna and the Watsons into their darkest case yet. The clues point toward a killer whose methods recall Jack the Ripper.
The Blue Diamond
by Leonard Goldberg
2022
A priceless blue diamond vanishes from a heavily guarded London hotel suite during the First World War. Joanna and the Watsons must solve the theft before the missing gem becomes a weapon in a much larger game.
The Wayward Prince
by Leonard Goldberg
2023
During the Great War, Joanna and the Watsons are summoned into a case that reaches the heart of the royal family. A threat involving Prince Harry could shake the throne itself.
A Scandalous Affair
by Leonard Goldberg
2025
In wartime London, Joanna and the Watsons are asked to handle a blackmail case tied to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his family. What looks like private scandal soon threatens public power.
Where should I start?
If you want the classic medical thrillers: Deadly Medicine → A Deadly Practice → Deadly Care
If you want the early standalone novels: Transplant → The Cure
If you want high-stakes modern suspense: Patient One → Plague Ship
If you want the Sherlock mysteries: The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes → A Study in Treason → The Disappearance of Alistair Ainsworth
Author bio
Leonard Goldberg grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, and medicine shaped his life long before fiction did. He earned his medical degree at the Medical University of South Carolina, then built a career that took him west to California, where he spent many years affiliated with the UCLA Medical Center as a consulting physician and Clinical Professor of Medicine.
He was not a novelist who learned a little medicine for research. He was a doctor first. Over the years he became board certified in internal medicine, hematology, and rheumatology, worked as a sought-after expert witness in medical malpractice cases, and published more than a hundred scientific studies in peer-reviewed journals. That depth shows up all through his fiction, especially in the way hospitals, labs, and emergency rooms feel busy, pressured, and real.
That day job mattered.
Goldberg's path into writing came from a very specific medical question. While working on a UCLA research project involving blood disorders, he encountered an extremely unusual blood type, O-Rh null, sometimes described as a kind of universal donor blood. That discovery sparked the idea for Transplant, his first novel, about a young woman whose body makes her frighteningly valuable to powerful people in need of organs. It is a very Goldberg beginning, a strange clinical fact, a moral trap, and a race against people who think science can solve anything if they are rich enough.
He kept going. In the 1990s he launched the Joanna Blalock books with Deadly Medicine, then followed with novels like A Deadly Practice, Deadly Care, and Deadly Harvest. Those stories center on a Los Angeles forensic pathologist with a sharp eye for murder hidden inside respectable institutions. Readers who like Goldberg usually like that mix of medical detail and straight-ahead suspense. The science is there, but the books move.
Later he shifted into bigger action territory with Patient One and Plague Ship, introducing emergency room doctor David Ballineau and nurse Carolyn Ross. In those books the threats are not just private crimes or corrupt hospital schemes. They are terrorist attacks, outbreaks, quarantines, and public disaster. Even so, the basic appeal stays the same, competent people under pressure trying to think clearly while everything around them goes wrong.
Then he took an unexpected turn.
With The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes and A Study in Treason, Goldberg moved into historical mystery and let his long-running fascination with deduction step to the front. In an interview, he explained that a critic once described Joanna Blalock as almost Holmes-like, and that idea eventually nudged him toward making a Victorian Joanna the daughter of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler. He was well set up for the leap. During a sabbatical year from UCLA, he lived in London and did research at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, one of the places that later appears in the series.
Across all of these books, a few things keep returning. Goldberg likes smart professionals, hidden corruption, impossible-seeming medical puzzles, and the moment when a tiny clue changes the whole case. He also likes systems under strain, hospitals, governments, families, and scientific institutions that look solid from the outside but are much messier up close.
Publisher and author bios describe him as a longtime California resident who later divided his time between Los Angeles and an island off the coast of South Carolina. That feels fitting. His books often stand with one foot in high-pressure modern medicine and the other in the slower pleasures of classic mystery, and he seems to have built a life that could hold both.
Edited by
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