Tod Goldberg Books in Order

If you want darkly funny mob fiction: Gangsterland → Gangster Nation → The Low Desert → Gangsters Don't Die
If you want his newest standalone noir: Only Way Out
If you want psychological suspense: Living Dead Girl
If you want a slick Los Angeles con story: Fake Liar Cheat
If you want TV-spy action: The Fix → The End Game → The Giveaway

Tod Goldberg was born on January 10, 1971, in Berkeley, California, and grew up in California, including Palm Springs. Writing was close at hand from the beginning. His mother was a columnist and author, his father worked in television news, and his siblings also became writers.

So yes, stories and deadlines were part of the family trade.

Before many readers knew him for crime fiction, Goldberg spent years working as a journalist and critic, especially in Las Vegas weeklies. That background still shows in his fiction. He writes like someone who has spent a lot of time listening closely, filing on deadline, and noticing how people talk when they are cornered, bluffing, or trying to save face.

His early books already show how wide his range can be. Fake Liar Cheat is a lean, nasty-funny Los Angeles novel about a bored young man pulled into fraud and nightlife. Living Dead Girl, about a husband dragged back toward a grief he cannot fully remember, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Readers who like Goldberg tend to come back for the same reason: the books can be funny, but the danger never feels fake.

Then he got darker, and funnier.

The books that pushed him to a wider audience are the Gangsterland novels. Beginning with Gangsterland and continuing through Gangster Nation, The Low Desert, and Gangsters Don't Die, the series follows Chicago hit man Sal Cupertine, who ends up hiding in Las Vegas as Rabbi David Cohen. It is an absurd setup on paper, but Goldberg grounds it in real fear, real greed, and real loneliness. His desert settings matter, too. Palm Springs, Las Vegas, and the wider inland West are not just scenery in these books. They are places built on reinvention, money, spiritual salesmanship, and bad plans.

He is at home in the short form, too.

His story collections, especially Simplify, Other Resort Cities, and The Low Desert, show the same interests from another angle. He keeps returning to lonely resort towns, men with bad judgment, families carrying old damage, and people who think one more lie will solve everything. Even when he shifts from novels to stories, the mood stays recognizably his: sharp dialogue, dark humor, and a lot of sympathy for people making awful choices.

Goldberg has also moved comfortably between lanes. He wrote five novels in the Burn Notice universe, bringing Michael Westen and company onto the page with the same brisk, improvised energy as the show. He later co-wrote The House of Secrets with Brad Meltzer, a conspiracy thriller that became a New York Times bestseller. More recently, his 2025 novel Only Way Out moved his crime fiction to the Oregon coast, and in 2026 it was named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

He holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from Bennington College and is a professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, where he founded and directs the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts. He also spent a decade cohosting the books-and-writing podcast Literary Disco. He lives in Indio, California, with his wife, writer Wendy Duren.