Scott Blade Books in Order
Explore Scott Blade books in order, with Jack Widow and S. Lasher & Associates reading lists, summaries, series background, and guidance on where to start.
Last updated: January 13, 2026
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Publication Order
24 books
The Midnight Memory
by Scott Blade
2025
On a lonely Nebraska road at midnight, Widow encounters an elderly man in pajamas, barefoot and firing a shotgun at enemies only he can see. Helping him home pulls Widow into a decades old crime tied to a ruthless family who will kill to keep their past buried.
The Ghost Line
by Scott Blade
2024
Drifting into the Ozarks, Widow crosses paths with Nora Sutton, a young mother being squeezed by the Brock family, a clan that controls the town of Iron Crossing through fear. When he stands up for her, he ignites a war with a criminal dynasty that will not let go.
The Shadow Club
by Scott Blade
2023
Set during Widow's final week at the US Naval Academy, this prequel begins when a dying woman asks him to solve her sister's long cold murder. She points him toward a secret club of elite investigators whose shadowy brand of justice forces him to question what justice really costs.
The Kill Promise
by Scott Blade
2022
Near a naval base outside Seattle, Widow attends a Navy Cross ceremony meant to honor Lou Cosay, a groundbreaking Native American NCIS agent. When she vanishes before the event, he follows her trail to an off grid North Dakota town where deadly secrets and an old promise are waiting.
The Protector
by Scott Blade
2021
Walking a dark highway at night, Widow is nearly run down by a car that suddenly veers off and crashes into a tree. The dying driver, a US Marshal, begs him to protect a relocated witness whose cover has been blown, sending Widow racing to intercept the killers.
Nothing Left
by Scott Blade
2021
In a vast county in New Mexico, a lone patrol officer discovers two fellow cops shot dead in their cruiser and a giant drifter standing over the corpses. Forced into an uneasy partnership, she and Widow chase a setup that leads far beyond a simple cop killing.
The Double Man
by Scott Blade
2020
Camping alone on Alaska's Kodiak Island, Widow thinks he has finally found real solitude until he meets a stranger with the exact face of a notorious killer. Unsure whether it is a coincidence or a fugitive in hiding, he starts asking questions that someone wants silenced.
Patriot Lies
by Scott Blade
2020
Passing through Washington, DC, Widow reads about a homeless veteran found burned alive on a park bench and decides to attend the man's nearly empty wake. There he learns the dead soldier left behind a hidden fortune, drawing Widow into a trail of murder, stolen honor, and treason.
The Standoff
by Scott Blade
2019
An ATF raid on a violent cult goes horribly wrong, sending the leader and his followers fleeing across the countryside. They seize a remote family farm and take everyone inside hostage, not realizing there is one guest already there who refuses to bow: Jack Widow.
Foreign and Domestic
by Scott Blade
2019
A mistaken arrest drops Widow into the Miami jail system until a quiet call from the Secret Service pulls him out. The agency's director needs him to find his kidnapped daughter and stop a plot that aims a gun at the President from inside the country and out.
The Last Rainmaker
by Scott Blade
2018
A legendary sniper called the Rainmaker is assassinating the best shooters in the world to prove he is untouchable. Widow is the only man to survive him, and becomes the one person who can track this ghostlike killer before the next long distance shot lands.
The Devil's Stop
by Scott Blade
2018
In the isolated town of Hellbent, New Hampshire, a pregnant woman arrives searching for her missing husband, a nuclear missile officer who has vanished without a trace. Widow agrees to help her and collides with a vicious gang of ex soldiers led by a man who seems almost devilish.
Fire Watch
by Scott Blade
2018
On the run after being accused of murdering her abusive husband, Molly DeGorne hides at a remote fire lookout tower in the mountains. When cartel hit teams close in, the only person standing between her and death is a drifting ex operative named Jack Widow.
Black Daylight
by Scott Blade
2018
On a snowy night in the Black Hills of South Dakota, Widow stumbles onto the brutal aftermath of a roadside crime, catching only the criminals' taillights as they flee. Named the sheriff's main suspect, he fights to clear his name and expose a hidden web of depravity.
Without Measure
by Scott Blade
2017
After sharing a quiet diner with a decorated Marine in a California mountain town, Widow later learns that the soldier has shot up a nearby base and killed himself. Branded the top suspect, he digs into the case and uncovers a far larger terrorist scheme.
The Midnight Caller
by Scott Blade
2017
In New York City for his birthday, Widow answers a midnight call from a terrified woman with a Russian accent who says she is being held prisoner. When the line goes dead, he follows the faint trail into a high risk plot tied to a looming nuclear threat.
Once Quiet
by Scott Blade
2017
Short on cash, Widow takes a job on a failing cattle ranch in northern Montana run by a haunted young wife whose husband has lain in a coma for years. Strange watchers circle the property, and a supposed quiet break turns into a deadly siege.
Name Not Given
by Scott Blade
2017
On a stormy beach, Widow finds a pair of Army dog tags with the name carefully filed off. When he turns them in at the nearest base, the FBI greet him as a suspect in a string of murdered female soldiers, forcing him to hunt the real killer.
Winter Territory
by Scott Blade
2016
In the dead of winter on a Wyoming reservation, a CIA handler loses contact with his undercover man investigating a terrifying bioweapon plot. As a blizzard closes in, Jack Widow goes undercover to find the missing agent and stop a hidden terrorist threat.
Gone Forever
by Scott Blade
2016
Elite undercover agent Jack Widow is yanked off a mission when his mother, a small-town Mississippi sheriff, is gunned down. Returning to a town that treats him like a vagrant, he uncovers missing girls and a deadly secret his mother died pursuing.
A Reason to Kill
by Scott Blade
2016
Waiting at a dusty Texas bus station, Widow meets a grandmother traveling alone to rescue her kidnapped granddaughter. When the woman suddenly dies, he takes her ticket and her mission, tracking the child through back roads, small towns, and a ruthless conspiracy.
Cut and Dry
by Scott Blade
2014
FBI serial killer hunter Kirk Cutter discovers that dozens of murderers once defended by Shane Lasher's firm have quietly disappeared. While Cutter builds a case that Lasher is a killer of killers, Lasher tracks a new murderer called the Woodsman, whose grisly carving hobby leaves bodies in the woods.
The StoneCutter
by Scott Blade
2013
Shane Lasher is a charismatic criminal attorney with a secret life as a vigilante serial killer who targets his own guilty clients. When murders start again that match the signature of the StoneCutter, a sadist he once defended and then eliminated, he must hunt the new butcher while hiding his own crimes.
The Secret of Lions
by Scott Blade
2013
In London, art student Barbara Howard becomes obsessed with an unsigned painting known as The Secret of Lions and the mystery of its creator. Her search uncovers the buried story of Willem, a gifted boy stolen in 1920s Germany and raised inside the Nazi elite, and a secret powerful enough to reshape lives decades later.
Where should I start?
If you want to start with Jack Widow: Gone Forever → Winter Territory → A Reason to Kill.
If you enjoy government conspiracies and spy plots: Without Measure → Foreign and Domestic → Patriot Lies.
If you prefer darker, legal-vigilante thrillers: The StoneCutter → Cut and Dry.
If you want a standalone historical ride: The Secret of Lions.
If you are looking for his latest high-stakes cases: Nothing Left → The Protector → The Kill Promise → The Shadow Club → The Ghost Line.
Author bio
Scott Blade grew up in Mississippi, not far from the Gulf Coast, in a landscape of pine trees, back roads, and humid air. He has said that reading was his way of looking past the tree line, and that thrillers and adventure stories were the first books that made him want to travel. Long before he ever bought a plane ticket, he was already wandering in his head.
As a teenager and college student he wrote characters, scenes, and fragments of novels while working odd jobs and dreaming about the kind of life his heroes lived. The Jack Reacher novels in particular lit a fuse, combining a drifter's freedom with a sharp eye for justice that Blade later folded into his own work.
He did not stay put for long.
In his thirties he stepped out of a more conventional life and started moving, hitchhiking across the United States, living out of a backpack, and writing wherever he could find a table and an outlet. He jokes that he owns little more than a toothbrush, a change of clothes, a passport, and his laptop, which he carries from coffee shop to bus station to rented room.
That roaming life shows up on the page in his best known work, the Jack Widow series. In Gone Forever, Winter Territory, A Reason to Kill, and the long run of novels that follow, Blade writes about a former Navy cop and covert operative who walks away from government work and drifts from town to town, stumbling into trouble and staying only long enough to set things right. The books move from snowbound reservations to dusty Texas bus stations, border deserts, capital cities, and forgotten side roads, always with one man carrying his past on his back.
Blade is open about how closely Jack Widow sits beside Jack Reacher in the thriller family tree, and early digital editions even borrowed more directly from Lee Child's universe, featuring a drifter named Cameron Reacher in a series marketed as Get Jack Reacher or Jack Cameron. Over time those stories shifted into the fully separate Jack Widow line, keeping the lone drifter feel while grounding the books in Blade's own characters, plots, and sense of place.
He has also wandered into darker territory with the S. Lasher & Associates books, beginning with The StoneCutter and Cut and Dry. Those novels follow Shane Lasher, a criminal defense attorney who secretly hunts and kills the very predators he once defended, blending courtroom drama with the ruthless logic of a vigilante serial killer.
And in the standalone historical thriller The Secret of Lions, he turns to prewar Europe, Nazi politics, and the long echo of a single mysterious painting.
Across these very different books, some threads repeat. His stories tend to put a solitary investigator on the road, drop them into a place that looks ordinary from the outside, and then strip away that surface to show buried crimes, broken systems, and small acts of courage. Away from the page, Blade still lives the way he writes, as a self-described nomadvelist who spends most of his time traveling across North America and Europe, finding the next coffee shop, the next notebook, and the next Jack Widow story.
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