Phil M Williams Books in Order
Explore Phil M Williams books in order, with quick summaries, series guides, and simple where to start advice for his thrillers and dystopian fiction.
Last updated: July 5, 2026
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Publication Order
27 books
Against the Grain
by Phil M Williams
2015
Orphaned teen Matt Moyer is raised on a rough Pennsylvania farm by a fiercely independent great-uncle. When he is forced into public school, he runs headfirst into hypocrisy, corruption, and hard truths about his past.
Stone Lake
by Phil M Williams
2015
Jon Porter is stuck working beside his ex-wife and ex-best friend when he meets Morgan in the small resort town of Stone Lake. Their growing connection feels real, but Morgan is hiding a secret that could wreck everything.
Cesspool
by Phil M Williams
2016
After his life falls apart, former teacher James Fisher drifts into a backwoods town hoping to disappear. Instead he tries to help an abused girl and ends up facing a corrupt police department that counts on people staying quiet.
Initiation
by Phil M Williams
2016
Army brat Carter Lynch transfers to a football program obsessed with winning and survival. As he battles for a starting spot and grows close to Sara, rivalry, hazing, and buried violence push him toward a brutal reckoning.
The Propaganda Project
by Phil M Williams
2016
In this nonfiction book, Williams breaks down how propaganda works in politics, media, school, and culture. It is a direct look at the tactics used to shape belief, manage fear, and make bad ideas sound normal.
No Conscience
by Phil M Williams
2017
Wes Shaw has always felt like the odd one out in his family, until he starts questioning the saintly image of his mother. The deeper he digs, the more the Shaws must choose between comfortable lies and a darker truth.
Sedition
by Phil M Williams
2017
A trucker, a blogger, and a congressman get pulled into a country on the edge. After George Chapman foils an assassination attempt, his sudden fame collides with political rage, conspiracy, and the threat of open revolt.
The Predator Hunter
by Phil M Williams
2018
Kyle Summers spends his nights luring child predators into real-world confrontations while his friend Troy films the fallout. Their vigilante hobby gives them purpose, but hero fantasies get complicated once the danger pushes back.
What Happened at the Lake
by Phil M Williams
2018
Alex Palmer rents a lake house hoping to pull his fractured family back together. Then a brutal double murder turns the vacation into a nightmare, and everyone around him starts to look like a suspect.
Rumors
by Phil M Williams
2019
In West Lake, gossip is power and nobody's secret stays buried for long. A manipulative principal, a coach under pressure, a new teacher with a past, and a closeted student collide in a small town built on silence.
Enemies of the State
by Phil M Williams
2020
After Silver City inspires freer communities, the backlash begins. Derek and Summer hide in Panama, Jacob tightens his grip on media and money, and Naomi's presidential run brings the fight over freedom to a boil.
Exodus
by Phil M Williams
2020
Derek is trapped on Psycho Island while Summer escapes to Silver City in search of her father and stolen son. Jacob's failed cover-up turns into a dangerous rescue plan, and Naomi keeps climbing toward power.
Psycho Island
by Phil M Williams
2020
In a surveillance-heavy 2050 America, a farmer, a nurse, a banker, and a politician collide as a test for psychopathy sends unwanted people to an open-air prison colony called Psycho Island.
Silver City
by Phil M Williams
2020
Silver City is the only real refuge for enemies of the state, which makes it a target. As Derek and Summer try to rebuild, Jacob moves to crush the city and Naomi bargains away more of herself for power.
Collapse
by Phil M Williams
2021
Governments crack down as Derek suffers in a brutal prison, Summer turns to desperate allies, and Jacob flees to Switzerland with problems of his own. Naomi finally has sweeping power, and the consequences are anything but clean.
Nothing to Lose
by Phil M Williams
2021
After his wife's death, a bitter widower becomes the neighborhood outcast and the target of relentless complaints. Broke and close to losing his home, he decides he is done playing nice with the people who want him gone.
Redemption
by Phil M Williams
2021
A missing girl, a husband's DNA, and a family split by loyalty drive this domestic thriller. Twenty years after an impossible choice shattered her life, old secrets return and force another reckoning.
No Good Deed
by Phil M Williams
2022
Luke Archer steps in when he sees a man being beaten by a police officer, and his life implodes. Trapped in a corrupt town's legal machine, he must hope the truth matters more than loyalty to the badge.
The Interview
by Phil M Williams
2022
Mo and Cora each land what looks like a dream job interview, only to learn the employers care less about resumes than about hidden sins. Their pasts become the real test in this eerie, pressure-cooker novella.
The Cart Pusher
by Phil M Williams
2023
Scot's college plans collapse when his parents stop paying tuition, sending him back to Big-Mart and a job pushing carts. As money, love, and wounded pride tangle together, he bets hard on reinvention and a Bitcoin dream.
You Matter More Than You Think
by Phil M Williams
2023
Williams looks at meaning, purpose, and how to live well through philosophy, religion, and the words of people facing death. It is a short nonfiction guide for readers asking big questions without wanting a lecture.
Death Do Us Part
by Phil M Williams
2024
Professor James Harris hides during the home invasion that kills his wife, then has to live with what he heard and what he failed to do. To survive, he must figure out whether her murder was random or deeply personal.
Ugly AF
by Phil M Williams
2024
Abandoned as a child and mocked for his looks, a gifted athlete chases a football future that never comes easily. One party changes everything, and the rest of his life becomes a test of how many hits he can absorb.
What Happened in the Woods
by Phil M Williams
2025
After a hard childhood under a paranoid father who taught her survival, Brandi Hunt thinks she has left the woods behind. Then a fake modeling job turns into a trap, and those lessons become the only reason she might live.
Ashes to Ashes
by Phil M Williams
2026
Justin Boyle's team takes on the disappearance of nine-year-old Ethan Hoover while Justin also tries to help an old friend calling from jail. Two urgent mysteries, too many suspects, and fading time make a bad situation worse.
Chilled to the Bone
by Phil M Williams
2026
Teacher Sara Summers shrugs off strange emails until the attention turns threatening. Justin Boyle and his team dig through a circle of creepy admirers, bad exes, and school secrets to find the person closing in on her.
Without a Trace
by Phil M Williams
2026
When a missing teen is brushed off as a runaway, Justin Boyle starts asking better questions. With help from a battered crew of outsiders, he follows the case into a darker world than the police want to see.
Where should I start?
If you want a big dystopian binge: Psycho Island → Exodus → Silver City → Enemies of the State → Collapse
If you want twisty family suspense: No Conscience → What Happened at the Lake → Redemption
If you want crime with a strong justice streak: Cesspool → The Predator Hunter → No Good Deed
If you want character-driven literary fiction: Against the Grain → Stone Lake → The Cart Pusher → Ugly AF
If you want the newer recurring-investigator series: Without a Trace → Chilled to the Bone → Ashes to Ashes
Author bio
Phil M Williams was born in Fort Gulick, Panama, and he now lives in central Pennsylvania with his wife, Denise. He writes across a wide stretch of fiction, but most readers know him for thrillers that drop ordinary people into ugly situations and force them to make hard choices. When he is not writing, he is working on the couple's permaculture farm, raising food and keeping one foot in practical, everyday life.
He has said he never grew up thinking he would become an author. Writing was around him, though. In one interview he joked that he was only the fourth best author in his family, which tells you something about his tone, dry, self-aware, and not especially interested in mythmaking. That same plainspoken quality runs through his fiction. Even when the plots get large, the voice stays close to the ground.
Before he published anything, Williams wrote two practice books and left them in the drawer. Then he and Denise co-wrote Farmer Phil's Permaculture, a children's picture book that reflected their life on the farm. From there he moved into fiction with books like Stone Lake and Against the Grain, early novels that already show his interests clearly, strained families, moral pressure, class tension, and people trying to hold on to truth when comfort would be easier.
Routine matters to him.
When he is drafting, he has said he writes in the morning, usually from eight to noon, with the phone off and the rest of the world shut out. After that, he heads outside for chores. That mix of quiet desk time and physical work seems to fit the books themselves. They can be thoughtful and political, but they rarely feel airy or abstract. He has also said he does not want reading to feel like work, so he keeps the prose direct and the stories moving.
Ordinary people matter in his books.
A lot of Williams's strongest novels start with people who are not built like thriller heroes. No Conscience turns a damaged family into psychological suspense. What Happened at the Lake begins as a family getaway and collapses into murder and suspicion. Redemption digs into buried crimes, loyalty, and the way old decisions keep poisoning the present. No Good Deed asks what happens when someone does the right thing in public and the local system decides to crush him for it. Teachers, farmers, truckers, mall workers, spouses, and broke young adults show up again and again in his work.
He also likes taking those everyday pressures and scaling them up. His five-book 2050 series imagines a near-future America shaped by surveillance, automation, designer babies, and a political class that keeps promising safety while tightening control. Williams once said he spent more than a year building the outline for that series before writing it, and the sprawl shows, the books move between a struggling farmer, a nurse, a banker, and a politician whose lives keep colliding. At the same time, he has talked about preferring standalones because he likes telling a complete story in one book, then moving on once the story has said what it needs to say.
That helps explain why his catalog can jump from political thrillers like Sedition to vigilante crime stories like The Predator Hunter to newer investigative fiction such as Without a Trace. The settings change, but the through line is steady. Williams keeps circling back to power, propaganda, justice, family strain, and the human cost of institutions that stop seeing people as people. His characters are often flawed, cornered, and a little outmatched. That is the point.
These days, his life still seems built around simple habits, write in the morning, work the land later, keep going. It is not a flashy author story, and maybe that is one reason readers connect with it. Phil M Williams writes dark books, but beneath them sits a stubborn belief that truth matters, and that regular people can still push back when the rules are rigged.
Edited by
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