Scott McEwen Books in Order

If you want the signature memoir first: American Sniper.
If you want gritty sniper thrillers: One-Way Trip → Target America → The Sniper and the Wolf → Ghost Sniper.
If you like high-stakes YA adventure: Camp Valor → The Trigger Mechanism.
If you prefer real-world SEAL history: Eyes on Target → Hell Week and Beyond.
If you want leadership and frontline nonfiction: American Commander → City of Death.

Scott McEwen is a trial attorney in San Diego who also writes about modern war, special operations, and the people caught up in both. He is best known as coauthor of American Sniper, but his work now ranges from military thrillers to young adult adventure and narrative nonfiction.

He grew up in the small town of Heppner in the mountains of Eastern Oregon, where scouting trips, hunting seasons, and long days outside were a normal part of life. Those early years as an Eagle Scout, hiking, fishing, and learning to handle a rifle responsibly, shaped both his love of the outdoors and his interest in marksmanship.

After earning an undergraduate degree at a college in Oregon, McEwen spent time studying and working in London. Living overseas gave him a broader view of world events and politics, experience that later found its way into his writing about international conflict and covert operations.

He eventually settled in San Diego and built a career as a trial attorney. Long hours in court and the discipline of preparing complex cases turned out to be good training for writing. He began drafting stories at night and on weekends, drawing on legal work, a deep interest in military history, and conversations with friends in the special operations community.

That background led directly to American Sniper, the memoir of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle that McEwen wrote with Kyle and Jim DeFelice, capturing a decade of combat tours from Fallujah and Ramadi to the strain of coming home and eventually leading to a number one bestseller and a major film adaptation directed by Clint Eastwood.

Rather than staying only with memoir, McEwen moved into fiction with the Sniper Elite series, coauthored with Thomas Koloniar. Those novels follow Navy SEAL sniper Gil Shannon through missions that range from rescuing a captured helicopter pilot in One-Way Trip to hunting terrorists and rival snipers in Target America, The Sniper and the Wolf, and Ghost Sniper. The books lean into technical detail and battlefield tension, but they also spend time on the friendships, rivalries, and hard choices inside the teams.

McEwen has also written for younger readers with the Camp Valor series, created with Hof Williams. In those books, juvenile offenders get a risky second chance in a secret training camp that turns troubled teens into covert operatives. The stories mix high school energy with special operations skills, and they explore what it means to grow up fast when the missions feel very real.

On the nonfiction side, he has continued to return to real-world warriors and crisis zones. Eyes on Target looks inside the culture and history of the Navy SEALs, American Commander follows Ryan Zinke from SEAL Team leadership into public life, and City of Death tells Ephraim Mattos's story of volunteering on the front lines in Mosul. Hell Week and Beyond steps back to the shoreline of Coronado to show how SEALs are made in the first place, through training that pushes people far past what they thought they could endure.

McEwen still lives in San Diego, balancing his legal work with writing, supporting military charities, and holding onto the outdoor habits he learned in Oregon.

For readers, that combination of courtroom discipline, field research, and personal loyalty to the people he profiles gives his books a straightforward, boots-on-the-ground feel. He is less interested in polishing a myth than in showing how real men and women carry heavy responsibilities, make mistakes, and keep going anyway.