Where To Start With The Books Of Chuck Wendig, 2025 Edition

Everything is perfectly normal and fine, and in that world of normal fine normalcy, one might want to read books. And once in a while, I get someone asking me, “Hey, what book of yours should I read first/next,” and I never exactly know how to answer that question succinctly, except for maybe blindfolding you and spinning you around and pushing you into a stack of my books and hoping one falls into your arms. I mean, I’ve now written *counts on fingers and toes and various clandestine appendages* 28 novels, with number 29 (Staircase in the Woods) arriving at the end of April. Plus three more secret books (two more adult novels, one middle grade) coming out, for 32 goddamn novels. That’s not even to mention the three writing books I’ve written, or the novellas, or, or, or.

It’s a lot of books! You’d be right to feel dizzy at the options! I didn’t even realize I’d written that many! What the hell is wrong with me?

Anyway. The question persists: where to begin with my books?

So, here I will attempt to answer this question! But I’ll answer it in a variety of ways, and you can do with it as you see fit. Ready? Let’s do it.

Reading Order

So, beyond chronological order, if I were to recommend a reading order based on… I dunno, vibes? Personal preference? I’d say this would be my reading order for you, if you were an adult person–>

Wanderers -> The Book of Accidents -> Wayward -> Black River Orchard -> The Miriam Black series (in order: Blackbirds, Mockingbird, The Cormorant, Thunderbird, The Raptor & The Wren, Vultures) -> Zer0es -> Invasive -> Atlanta Burns -> The Blue Blazes

Here you might be saying, “But that’s not all your books,” and you’d be right, it isn’t. But that’s for a reason! These are what I’d consider the… I dunno, core books of mine? The canon, so to speak?

But it’s not the only way to approach the work. Let’s keep going with —

My Best Book

If you wanted to know what I consider to be my best book —

It’s this one. Wanderers. This is a book that I’d had in mind for years but it didn’t really have a full story or characters with it — but once I sold it on pitch, and once I sat down to write it (without an outline, no less) it more or less just fell out of my skull. It garnered what was to me a very large amount of blurbs, a lot of starred reviews, and it just opened a lot of doors for me. So, I think that’s my best book. It’s certainly also my bestseller. And it’s a book that broke me. In the best way possible. I thought I knew how to write books? And this book told me I didn’t write them the way I thought I did.

(Buy it here: Bookshop.org print, e-book, audio at Libro.fm, or buy signed/personalized at Doylestown Bookshop)

The Book That Means The Most To Me

I’d tried to write this book two other times throughout my life and I just wasn’t ready for it. And then, one day, in my 40s? I was. I wanted to tell a story about generational trauma and family and how parents sometimes hold back the seawall of their own trauma but how that damages them too — and then, you know, there’s ghosts and a creepy coal mine and a missing serial killer and all sorts of other horror trappings. Plus some big twisty twists in there. But really the emotional core of it is important to me — it was then, and remains so, now. (Staircase in the Woods isn’t out yet, so it’s not included on al this stuff, but I pair it with Book of Accidents in terms of a personal book with something to say about myself and my view of the world emotionally more than sociologically or politically.)

Bookshop.com print, ebook, audio at Libro.fm, or buy signed/personalized at Doylestown.

My Actual Favorite Book

This one’s difficult! Honestly. It may seem strange that I like my own books but, for the most part, I do. I write them so that I like them! I write the kinds of books I want to read. The first time I really wrote a book that I was like, “Oh wait, fuck yeah,” it was probably the third Miriam Black book, The Cormorant. I just vibed really well with it, felt in-sync with it while writing it and after. Then the next one was Atlanta Burns, which started life as Bait Dog and then ended up a proper YA-ish YA-adjacent book, and you know, it’s hard not to enjoy that one, either, because — teen girl taking down small-town Nazis, especially these days, feels right.

But, at the end of the day, my current actual favorite book is —

You sort of had to guess, right? It felt like a stunt, “Oh, I’m going to write a horror novel about apples,” but then it actually happened, and I loved writing it, and it’s really been finding its audience since it hit paperback, which is nice. I think it’s a weird, neat, scary book about apples, and cults, and what happens when you lose your friends and family to bad ideas and social malignancies. It’s got social horror and body horror and probably way too much information about apples.

Bookshop.com print, ebook, audio at Libro.fm, or buy signed/personalized at Doylestown.

The Book I Wished More People Knew About

This might seem like a controversial one but —

If Wanderers is my biggest seller, then Wayward is my least successful book — financially — of my current crop of books. I’m saying that to be honest! It is nowhere near the first book in sales. Now, part of that is normal. You’re never going to get 100% uptake on a sequel; usually it’s about 50-60%, if things went right. And we’re just not there with this book. Most people didn’t even seem to know there was a sequel, and I don’t know how to scream it so loud that all the readers in all the land can hear it. But here’s the thing — I like this book more than I like the first one. It’s not that I think it’s better, per se, but I think it’s more interesting, and it concludes the story from the first one in ways that make me really happy. It contains some chapters that have legit made me weep like a baby. And other chapters where I wanna pump my first like it’s end of the Breakfast Club. I really love this book. There’s a golden retriever named Gumball, for fuck’s sake, and he’s a very, very good boy, perhaps even the best boy. So if any book of mine needs the proselytization, it is absolutely this one. I mean, for fuck’s sake it contains Dolly Parton as an apocryphal character and tells a story about how she deals with Nazis. C’mon.

Bookshop.com print, ebook, audio at Libro.fm, or buy signed/personalized at Doylestown.

That’s How You Get Ants / Elon Musk Sucks Moist Open Ass

Did you know that once upon a time, Wanderers was going to be a sort-of-sequel to this book, in the way that this book is a sort-of-not-really-sequel to Zer0es? It’s true! Hannah Stander, the futurist-daughter-of-doomsday-preppers, actually appeared in the first draft of Wanderers. Anyway. This is a thriller I had a blast writing, and it features both a) creepy freaky skincutter ants and b) a billionaire analog to Elon Musk who very definitely sucks and is evil, and I wrote this shit in like, 2014 or something. Fuck that guy. I hope he gets his skin eaten by ants. Anyway. I’d love to write more Hannah Stander, she’s a character I really like — there was almost a TV show about her, and then that TV show was almost an animated TV show about her, and things got really weird, and then they did not happen because it was bad.

Bookshop.com print, ebook isn’t available at Bookshop so here’s Amazon, audio at Libro.fm, or buy signed/personalized at Doylestown.

If You Want A Whole Damn Series That Tells A Complete Story

Miriam Black knows how you’re going to die, and that’s really fucked her up. Especially because she thinks she can’t do shit about it — until she realizes one day that she can interfere in someone’s death, but not easily, and not for free. There’s always a cost. She’s profane, unhinged, and is a character who is near and dear to my heart. These books were called urban fantasy, and then later on, supernatural suspense — but for me, they’re horror-crime.

(And note, there are also novellas that slot between the books!)

Start with the first book — Bookshop.com print, ebook through Amazon, audio at Libro.fm, or buy signed/personalized at Doylestown.

I’m A Writer Who Writes

There, I have two books for you — Damn Fine Story is about the mechanics of story, plot and character. Gentle Writing Advice is more about the life of a writer, what you can take, what you can leave, and most importantly, how you deal with being a writer in times of strife and stress.

I Have Kids Who I Want To Join The Cult I Mean Become Your Readers

I have two middle grade books out — Dust & Grim is a weird horror-fantasy-thingy that’s funny and strange about a girl who inherits a mortuary for monsters, and Monster Movie! is about a kid who is afraid of everything and ends up doing battle with a monster movie in the most literal sense of the term — the movie is the monster. The latter is a standalone; the former is technically a standalone but one I wanted to write sequels for, but the publisher wanted to stick to one-and-done, even though the book ended up selling well in paperback (enough that it became a NYT bestseller).

I’ve also written YA, and my Empyrean trilogy — which, to be upfront about, is a trilogy published by one of Amazon’s publishing arms — is about the poor dust-scrabble folks who work amongst the carnivorous corn while the richie-riches live in their sky-cities looking down. I think John Hornor Jacobs described it as Star Wars by way of John Steinbeck and I like that. These books tend to be pretty cheap in e-book, if you so desire.

But Chuck, What About Star Wars??

I mean, sure, if you like Star Wars, I wrote some of those. Three books, which I’m proud of, especially writing them under difficult conditions. I don’t get much for them if you buy them, and at the end of things, Star Wars did not treat me particularly well? I’m honestly still a little bitter about the whole affair, and that hasn’t faded much, so that’s on you if you wanna check ’em out. Again, I’m happy with them. But I don’t get squat. They put some of my characters in things and I don’t even seem to rate a thank you or a t-shirt, much less actual dollars in my pocket. *shrug*

Okay! So I think that’s a good primer on where to start with my books. So if you’re looking for some manner of escape from THE CURRENT CALAMITIES, look no further than this list. And of course in April, we have a new one from me if you need something oooh-shiny:

Pre-order signed, personalized copy here (with bonus stickers and unique book-specific specialization).

So lemme ask —

If you’ve read these, where would you tell people to start?