Sam Barone Books in Order

If you want the core Bronze Age saga: Dawn of Empire → Empire Rising → Quest for Honour / Conflict of Empires
If you want the earlier backstory first: Eskkar & Trella - The Beginning → Dawn of Empire → Empire Rising
If you want the later empire wars: Battle for Empire → Clash of Empires
If you want shorter Bronze Age side adventures: Rogue Warriors 1 → Rogue Warriors 2
If you want Sam Barone's sci-fi: Jettisoned → Sentinel Star

Sam Barone grew up in Queens, New York, and later graduated from Manhattan College with a B.S. in 1965. He studied psychology and history, which feels like a fitting background for a writer so interested in how people think, how power works, and how fragile early societies can be.

After college, he spent a hitch in the U.S. Marine Corps. Then he moved into the technology world, where he worked in software development and management for decades. By the time he retired in 1999, he had spent years building systems and solving practical problems, and he eventually held senior leadership work at Western Union International.

He came to fiction late.

Barone has said he always liked writing as a hobby, but retirement finally gave him room to treat it as real work. His first post-career project was science fiction. Then he started having recurring dreams about an ancient warrior defending a village from attack, and that image kept returning until it became the seed of a novel.

That dream became Dawn of Empire.

That book introduced readers to the world he is best known for: the early Bronze Age, the Land Between the Rivers, and the uneasy push from scattered settlements toward something more organized. In Dawn of Empire, the outcast fighter Eskkar and the enslaved but brilliant Trella help build and defend a walled settlement. Later books such as Empire Rising, Quest for Honour / Conflict of Empires, Battle for Empire, and Clash of Empires widen the story into city-state politics, professional armies, family strain, and the hard work of holding power once you have it.

The Eskkar books found a broad readership. Dawn of Empire was published in nine languages, and several titles in the series placed in Arizona Authors Association contests. What seems to pull readers in is the mix of speed and structure: battle scenes, yes, but also walls, supplies, training, alliances, and the constant question of whether order can really hold back chaos.

He also wrote outside historical fiction. The novella Jettisoned and the novel Sentinel Star move into science fiction, but they still feel like they come from the same mind. The setting changes from ancient river valleys to spacecraft and orbital politics, yet the tension is familiar: small groups under stress, hard decisions, and people trying to stay alive when the system around them starts breaking.

Barone has described himself as more of a storyteller than a writer, and that plainspoken label suits him. There is a directness to his work. No magic fixes, no mythic shortcuts, just characters trying to think faster, fight harder, or plan better than the danger in front of them. He lives in Prescott, Arizona, with his wife, Linda, and his late start in fiction is part of what makes his career interesting. He brought a lifelong interest in history, a practical career in technology, and one very persistent dream, then turned all of that into books.