Scott Lynch Books in Order

If you want the core Gentleman Bastard story: The Lies of Locke Lamora → Red Seas Under Red Skies → The Republic of Thieves.
If you like shorter stand-alone reads first: In the Stacks → A Year and a Day in Old Theradane → The Effigy Engine.
If you are caught up and waiting for book four: The Republic of Thieves → The Thorn of Emberlain (planned next in the series).

Scott Lynch was born on April 2, 1978, in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area. He would eventually trade the Upper Midwest for western Massachusetts, but the road there was anything but straight.

As a young adult he cycled through a long list of everyday jobs: washing dishes, bussing tables, waiting tables, designing websites, managing offices, cooking on the line, and freelancing as a writer and game supplement publisher. In 2004 he moved to eastern Wisconsin, trained as a firefighter at Anoka Technical College, and spent more than a decade as a paid-on-call firefighter in New Richmond.

Alongside those shifts he kept writing. In 2004 he sold his first novel, The Lies of Locke Lamora, to an editor at a major UK publisher, a sale he has often described as pleasantly accidental. The book came out in 2006 and introduced readers to the thief Locke Lamora and the city of Camorr.

That debut became the start of the Gentleman Bastard Sequence, a planned seven-book saga about a brilliant con artist and his friends trying to survive in the shattered Therin Throne empire. Red Seas Under Red Skies followed in 2007 and The Republic of Thieves in 2013, pushing the story from Camorr’s narrow canals to casino floors, pirate decks, and the political games of distant Karthain.

Readers tend to come for the elaborate cons and stay for the foul-mouthed friendship, dense cityscapes, and the sense that even minor characters have complicated lives just off the page.

The Lies of Locke Lamora picked up nominations for awards like the World Fantasy Award and the Locus Award for Best First Novel, and Lynch himself was twice shortlisted for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. In 2008 he received the Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer from the British Fantasy Society.

He has also written shorter work that explores other corners of his invented worlds. “In the Stacks” drops a group of student magicians into a living, hostile library where simply reshelving a book can get you killed. “The Effigy Engine” follows a mercenary company facing down an unstoppable war machine, while “A Year and a Day in Old Theradane” brings together retired thieves coerced into stealing an entire city street in a wizard-ruled metropolis.

Across these stories you see many of the same preoccupations: crowded cities, crooked deals, strange leftover magics, and people who rely on quick wits and found family more than raw power. Lynch has said he likes each Gentleman Bastard novel to throw the same core cast into a different sort of trouble, shifting from heist story to sea voyage to political knife fight while keeping the emotional through line intact.

Today Lynch lives in western Massachusetts with his wife, novelist Elizabeth Bear. By his own account their household includes four cats named Duncan, Gurney, Molly, and Fafhrd, plus two Icelandic horses, Ormr and Spola, who live at a nearby stable.

Between his years in emergency services, his love of games and history, and his ongoing mix of novels and short fiction, he has built a body of work that still feels very much mid-story rather than finished business.