The Chronological Man Adventure Books in Order

The Chronological Man Adventure series drops readers into an alternate 1890s where the fog is thick, the machinery hisses, and a mysterious inventor named Smith keeps turning up wherever reality starts to wobble. With his quick witted assistant April Malone, he plays the part of gentleman scientist while quietly deploying far more advanced tools than anyone around him suspects.

In The Monster in the Mist, Smith and April arrive in Boston just as people begin vanishing in the swirling fog. The police are out of their depth and the city is edging toward panic. Following a trail that leads from fashionable parlors to back alley fan tan dens, they uncover a secret society, corrupt officers, and a psychologist whose interest in the human mind has drifted into something more predatory. The book reads like a gaslit detective story with an engineer’s eye for gadgets.

The follow up, The Martian Emperor, widens the scope. A colossal airship appears over New York City in 1892, demanding that the world submit to the Martian flag or face destruction. Smith and April chase clues from Chinatown gambling rooms to smoke filled Tammany Hall back rooms and all the way up to the torch of the Statue of Liberty. Along the way they cross paths with historical figures, including a young Theodore Roosevelt, and tangle with politics as dangerous as any machine.

Across the books, Smith’s origins as a time traveler and hard science mind peek through the Victorian trappings. His inventions feel just a bit too precise, his understanding of physics a little too modern. The tension between what the era believes is possible and what Smith actually knows how to build gives the stories a playful, slightly subversive edge.

What ties the series together is tone. These are brisk, pulpy adventures that blend mystery, science fiction, and period detail without getting bogged down in any one element. Each story stands on its own but hints at a much larger conflict spread across time, leaving plenty of room for future exploits with Smith and April chasing the next impossible threat.