Randall Silvis Books in Order

This early collection gathers darkly comic stories about ordinary people caught between luck, longing, violence, and odd turns of fate. The pieces show Silvis moving easily between realism and the uncanny.

John Bloomhardt is thirty-four, trapped in a dead-end accounting job, and quietly coming apart under the pressure of work, marriage, and his own failures. Silvis turns his slump into a sharp, uneasy portrait of male disappointment.

Former Chicago private investigator Ernest DeWalt has reinvented himself as a college professor in rural Pennsylvania. When a colleague is murdered, he is pulled back into detection, and the case quickly turns ugly.

Photographer Donald is stuck in a midlife crisis while grief, infidelity, and mortality crowd in from every side. The story is darkly funny and unexpectedly tender, especially as his teenage son's strange fascination with death grows.

Wildlife filmmaker Mac Parris has spent decades hiding from his past when a young woman asks for help finding her brother's killer. Their search through the Allegheny high country stirs old grief and fresh danger.

This gift-style nonfiction collection rounds up fifty memorable fathers and offers short, readable sketches of what makes each one stand out. It is part celebration, part conversation starter about fatherhood in many forms.

This strange, time-spanning novel follows Ronald Shepard from lonely boy to eccentric billionaire, tracing a life warped by power, desire, and obsession. Four women shape the path that carries him toward ruin and, maybe, redemption.

In 1840 New York, street boy Augie Dubbins teams up with a young Edgar Allan Poe after a desperate death in the Hudson leads to murder. Their investigation moves from the Five Points slums to the city's wealthy heights.

After the death of his wife, Edgar Allan Poe travels to Pittsburgh with Augie Dubbins and finds himself in the middle of a disappearance case. The novel mixes grief, historical detail, and a grim search for a killer.

Also published as Disquiet Heart, this Edgar Allan Poe mystery sends Poe and Augie Dubbins to cholera-stricken Pittsburgh, where young women are vanishing. Grief, suspicion, and a brutal hunt for the killer drive the story.

Also published as North of Unknown, this narrative nonfiction follows Mina Hubbard as she returns to Labrador to finish the journey that killed her husband. Silvis turns the expedition into a tense story of endurance, mourning, and fierce determination.

Also published as Heart So Hungry, this narrative nonfiction follows Mina Hubbard's race across Labrador after her husband's disastrous expedition ended in death. It is part adventure story, part portrait of grief, resolve, and a woman determined to set the record straight.

An old man retells the story of his lifelong love for Lucia Luna, a woman ruined by village jealousy and superstition. The result is a melancholy fable about memory, longing, and the stories a town tells about itself.

Told as a confession, this novel centers on a man looking back at the choices and obsessions that shaped his life. The focus is less on plot mechanics than on guilt, desire, and self-examination.

When a local boy vanishes in rural Pennsylvania, artist Charlotte Dunleavy may be the last person who saw him. Hampered by migraines, memory gaps, and fear, she becomes entangled in a search that turns painfully personal.

Devon, a struggling fisherman on a bleak island off New England, sees one last chance in Queenie, a mysterious woman surrounded by rumors of magic. The novella balances hardship, desire, and the possibility of transformation.

Three brothers set out to punish the man who cheated them in a deal over a vintage Indian motorcycle. What begins as revenge uncovers family secrets and sends shock waves through all of their lives.

A reporter becomes fascinated by his best friend's mysterious fiancee and drifts toward trouble he barely understands. Silvis gives the story a classic noir pull, where desire clouds judgment and danger keeps getting closer.

Nick, a mob-connected New Yorker and frustrated film critic, wants out of the life and thinks one last favor will buy his freedom. Instead he stumbles into a wild, darkly comic mess involving love, danger, and a boss with strange appetites.

After losing his job, war veteran Russell helps a drugged young woman and makes one desperate mistake, taking cash from a meth house. The choice puts his family in the sights of violent men who want every dollar back.

When a beloved professor and novelist disappears after his wife and children are slaughtered, Sergeant Ryan DeMarco refuses to accept the obvious answer. His search leads into the missing man's past, his private grief, and a manuscript that may hold clues.

Three brothers in a fading town set out to get even over a stolen Indian motorcycle deal. Their plan goes badly wrong, and a hidden family truth turns revenge into tragedy.

A healing road trip ends when Ryan DeMarco and Jayme stumble into a cold case involving the remains of seven murdered girls. What follows is a dark search through buried secrets, predators, and the damage left by the past.

When his estranged wife attempts suicide, Ryan DeMarco is forced back to western Pennsylvania and the life he tried to leave behind. A new murder case, tied to old secrets and older violence, turns homecoming into another descent.

This collection opens with a Ryan DeMarco prequel, as the young sergeant investigates Meghan Fletcher's murder through interviews, records, and hard evidence. The rest of the book gathers dark crime stories, including Snap and And Sometimes the Abyss Winks at You.

Trying to recover from their last ordeal, Ryan DeMarco and Jayme are drawn into a gruesome triple murder in the woods. The case forces them back toward old enemies, buried grief, and a rural community full of lies.

This memoir gathers brief reflections on writing, fatherhood, love, aging, solitude, and the daily work of trying to live well. It is candid, searching, and often sharply funny.

Ryan DeMarco and Jayme Matson agree to help a nine-year-old girl identify her father, expecting a quiet case and a chance to heal. Instead, the search pulls them into family secrets, powerful men, and fresh violence in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

In this genre-bending thriller, a fictionalized Randall Silvis is pulled into a Pennsylvania case involving a triple murder and an abandoned baby. The deeper he digs, the more the story blurs the line between crime novel, confession, and true-crime puzzle.