The X-Files (Claudia Gray) Books in Order

Claudia Gray's The X-Files entry, Perihelion, picks up after the show's eleventh season and leans into the part of the franchise that has always mattered most: the uneasy mix of conspiracy, grief, and fierce personal loyalty between Mulder and Scully. This is not a reboot or a fresh-case-only story. It assumes the history matters.

At the start, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are still reeling from the loss of their son William, even as Scully's unexpected pregnancy opens the possibility of a different future. That leaves the book in a very X-Files emotional space, hopeful in one breath and wrecked in the next. They are trying to imagine life beyond the old patterns when the FBI asks for their help on a pair of bizarre murder cases.

Those cases have the right hook for this world. One killer seems able to control electricity. Another appears to vanish into smoke. That is enough to drag Mulder and Scully back toward the basement office and the unresolved questions that always follow them. As soon as the X-Files reopen, the book expands from strange crimes into a larger threat involving a shadowy cabal and a conspiracy with global reach.

So yes, the truth is still out there.

What keeps the novel grounded is Gray's attention to the central relationship. Mulder and Scully are not frozen in the old version of themselves. They are older, more hurt, and more aware of what these investigations cost. Their dynamic still has the familiar rhythm, skepticism and intuition, longing and restraint, but the emotional stakes are sharper because they are trying to protect not only each other but the life they might still build.

The tone lands exactly where many readers want an X-Files novel to land: eerie, investigative, a little romantic, and increasingly conspiratorial as it goes. There are monster-of-the-week pleasures in the setup, but the book is really interested in what happens when the past comes back around and asks the same two people to risk everything again.

That is the promise of an X-Files story, and Gray understands it.