F. Paul Wilson Books in Order (Updated September 10, 2026)

F. Paul Wilson writes science fiction, medical thrillers, horror, supernatural suspense, and interconnected speculative fiction. His most important creation is Repairman Jack, an unlicensed urban fixer whose apparently ordinary jobs gradually reveal a hidden war between cosmic forces. Jack’s story overlaps with Wilson’s six-book Adversary Cycle and a much larger framework Wilson calls the Secret History of the World.

This is one author where “books in order” genuinely requires more than a publication list. A reader can follow the Repairman Jack novels alone, read the six Adversary books, or use Wilson’s Secret History chronology to combine novels and stories that initially appear unrelated. For a first experience, publication order within the main Jack sequence is the least confusing route.

Three ways into F. Paul Wilson, depending on how deep you want to go

• For Repairman Jack: begin with The Tomb.
• For the original Adversary Cycle: begin with The Keep.
• For the complete interconnected universe: use the Secret History timeline only after you understand how Repairman Jack and the Adversary Cycle fit together.
• For Jack as a teenager: begin the Young Repairman Jack trilogy with Secret Histories.
• For Jack’s first years in New York: begin the Early Years trilogy with Cold City.
• For newer Secret History material: The Upwelling and Lexie form The Hidden sequence.

Repairman Jack’s main adult run

Jack has no Social Security number, does not work through normal legal channels, and makes a living fixing problems for people who cannot or will not turn to conventional authorities. Early cases can feel like urban crime thrillers, but the supernatural Secret History increasingly takes control of the series.

1. The Tomb (1984): Jack is hired to recover a stolen family necklace while simultaneously helping former lover Gia, only to discover that a violent supernatural creature called a rakosh is involved in a much older conflict.
2. Legacies (1998): A doctor inherits a strange house and asks Jack to prevent anyone from taking possession of it, drawing him into a mystery surrounding hidden technology and people willing to kill for what the building contains.
3. Conspiracies (1999): Jack searches for a missing conspiracy researcher and enters a gathering of people obsessed with UFOs, secret societies, and hidden history, only to learn that some of their impossible theories are closer to reality than he expected.
4. All the Rage (2000): A dangerous new street drug derived from a creature connected to Jack’s past sends him against criminals who have no idea what they are actually exploiting.
5. Hosts (2001): Jack’s sister Kate becomes connected to a strange group whose behavior suggests that an alien or supernatural intelligence can spread from person to person and absorb individual will.
6. The Haunted Air (2002): Jack investigates fraudulent psychics working from a supposedly haunted house, but the case becomes genuinely supernatural when forces attached to the property begin affecting everyone involved.
7. Gateways (2003): Jack travels to Florida after his father is injured and discovers that the older man has become involved in a conflict with strange local forces connected to the larger Secret History.
8. Crisscross (2004): An investigation involving the secretive Dormentalist Church brings Jack against an organization skilled at manipulation, blackmail, and hiding inconvenient truths.
9. Infernal (2005): Jack’s brother Tom brings him into possession of a dangerous artifact whose supernatural power turns family tension into a much larger threat.
10. Harbingers (2006): Jack becomes directly entangled with people who understand the cosmic struggle surrounding him, and the cost of his role in that war becomes brutally personal.
11. Bloodline (2007): Jack investigates a young woman’s controlling boyfriend and discovers a secret breeding program tied to the forces shaping the Secret History.
12. By the Sword (2008): A legendary Japanese blade, criminal factions, and people serving opposing supernatural powers converge as Jack gets closer to understanding the conflict around him.
13. Ground Zero (2009): Jack investigates questions surrounding the September 11 attacks and encounters another layer of the hidden struggle manipulating events in the ordinary world.
14. Fatal Error (2010): The secret Order moves toward a plan capable of destabilizing modern civilization while Jack races against forces preparing the world for the final conflict.
15. The Dark at the End (2011): Jack’s long-running war with the Otherness moves toward its endgame as characters and revelations from across the series converge.

The Dark at the End completes the main pre-Nightworld Repairman Jack sequence. The actual cosmic conclusion is Nightworld, which belongs simultaneously to the Adversary Cycle and the larger Repairman Jack story.

The Last Christmas fills one gap before the end

• The Last Christmas (2019): A later-written Repairman Jack novel returns to the period shortly before the end of civilization, placing Jack inside a Christmas-season fix while the approaching Secret History catastrophe remains in the background.

It was published years after The Dark at the End but is positioned earlier in the internal timeline. New readers can safely save it until after the original main run rather than interrupting publication order.

The Adversary Cycle is the spine behind Repairman Jack

1. The Keep (1981): Nazi soldiers occupying a mysterious Romanian fortress accidentally release an ancient evil, bringing the ageless warrior Glaeken back into conflict with Rasalom.
2. The Tomb (1984): Repairman Jack enters the larger mythology through his battle with supernatural rakoshi and the consequences of an old family curse.
3. The Touch (1986): Physician Alan Bulmer acquires an extraordinary healing ability and discovers that possessing a miraculous gift also places him inside a hidden struggle he does not understand.
4. Reborn (1990): A seemingly ordinary man’s mysterious origins become connected to the return of Rasalom and the events set in motion decades earlier by The Keep.
5. Reprisal (1991): Rasalom begins a calculated campaign against an ordinary man, using psychological and supernatural torment as the world moves closer to the final confrontation.
6. Nightworld (1992, later revised): The sun begins rising late, enormous holes appear across the Earth, and creatures of the Otherness emerge as Repairman Jack, Glaeken, and characters from across the Secret History make their final stand.

The traditional publication sequence is The Keep, The Tomb, The Touch, Reborn, Reprisal, and Nightworld. Internal chronology differs because Reborn occurs before The Tomb.

A better combined route once Jack enters the Adversary story

Readers who want both story lines integrated can use a hybrid sequence rather than finishing all six Adversary books first.

1. The Keep: Establish Glaeken, Rasalom, and the hidden conflict.
2. Reborn: Follow Rasalom’s return in the twentieth century.
3. The Tomb: Meet Repairman Jack and begin his adult series.
4. Continue Repairman Jack through Ground Zero: Let the apparently separate fixes gradually merge with the cosmic conflict.
5. The Touch: Add Alan Bulmer’s story before the final Secret History convergence.
6. Reprisal: Follow Rasalom as the end approaches.
7. Fatal Error: Return to Jack as civilization is deliberately destabilized.
8. The Dark at the End: Complete Jack’s immediate pre-apocalypse arc.
9. Nightworld: Finish both the Adversary Cycle and the central Repairman Jack saga.

This is not the only valid arrangement, but it makes the convergence easier to follow than treating every interconnected novel as an unrelated series.

Teenage Jack comes first chronologically

The Young Repairman Jack trilogy takes place in 1983 and shows Jack as a teenager in New Jersey before he becomes the anonymous New York fixer of The Tomb.

1. Secret Histories (2008): Teenage Jack and his friend Weezy Connell discover strange objects and hidden activity in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, introducing mysteries that belong to the larger Secret History.
2. Secret Circles (2010): Jack and Weezy continue investigating the secrets around their town and encounter another layer of the organizations and ancient forces operating behind ordinary life.
3. Secret Vengeance (2011): Jack’s willingness to intervene when someone is being harmed begins looking much more like the adult fixer he will eventually become.

Chronologically these books precede adult Jack, but publication order gives them extra resonance because they explain the origin of traits readers already recognize.

Cold City begins Jack’s New York apprenticeship

The Early Years trilogy follows Jack after leaving home and before his first adult appearance in The Tomb. These books show how he builds the skills, contacts, identity, and underground life that eventually define Repairman Jack.

1. Cold City (2012): A young Jack arrives in New York and begins surviving outside conventional systems, meeting people such as Abe and learning how to solve problems without relying on police or official institutions.
2. Dark City (2013): Jack becomes more deeply involved in New York’s hidden economies and criminal networks while developing the methods that will become his professional identity.
3. Fear City (2014): Jack’s early years move closer to the recognizable adult fixer as threats involving crime, terrorism, and his growing network test the life he has chosen.

The ICE trilogy looks standalone until the Secret History surfaces

1. Panacea (2016): Medical examiner Laura Fanning investigates two inexplicably burned bodies and follows evidence toward a legendary cure-all guarded by one secret group and hunted by another that believes humanity is meant to suffer.
2. The God Gene (2018): Laura and Rick Hayden travel to an isolated island while investigating unusual primate DNA whose implications could overturn accepted ideas about human evolution.
3. The Void Protocol (2019): Laura and Rick investigate a secret postwar project involving German portal technology and an entity brought through from somewhere beyond Earth, revealing how the trilogy fits into the wider Secret History.

Read all three in order. The trilogy progressively reveals that its scientific mysteries are part of the same hidden cosmology surrounding Repairman Jack.

The Hidden carries the Secret History beyond the old finale

1. The Upwelling (2024): New characters identified with the mysterious Hidden become involved in another manifestation of the forces operating beneath Wilson’s ordinary world.
2. Lexie (2024): Survivors of the Catskill Cataclysm remain targets while allies and enemies search for them and a massive iceberg appearing in the South Atlantic signals that the crisis is still expanding.

Wilson’s official site describes these as the final volumes of the Secret History of the World. They are best saved for readers already familiar with the cosmology rather than used as an introduction.

Double Threat and Double Dose form the Duad sequence

1. Double Threat (2021): A new pair of characters becomes entangled with strange powers and a threat that initially appears separate from Wilson’s older supernatural mythology.
2. Double Dose (2023): The consequences of the first Duad novel continue as the protagonists face another escalation of the unusual forces surrounding them.

The two books belong in order and also sit within the broader Secret History timeline.

Black Wind reaches backward into twentieth-century history

• Black Wind (1988): Spanning the years surrounding the Second World War, the novel combines Japanese secret traditions, American and Japanese characters, supernatural power, and wartime history inside the larger hidden world Wilson was constructing.

It stands on its own as a historical supernatural novel, but Wilson’s official Secret History chronology places it firmly inside the same hidden timeline.

The Fifth Harmonic is another Secret History side road

• The Fifth Harmonic (2003): A man facing a terminal diagnosis follows a healer into Mexico and discovers that the journey involves forces and possibilities beyond conventional medicine.

Wilson’s own chronology places this novel during the final pre-Nightworld period, near events in Bloodline and The Touch.

Wilson also built science-fiction series outside Repairman Jack

Not every F. Paul Wilson book belongs to the Secret History. His earlier science fiction includes the LaNague Federation material, medical thrillers, and other independent speculative novels.

• Healer: A far-future story about immortality and extraordinary abilities that belongs to Wilson’s science-fiction work rather than Repairman Jack’s contemporary supernatural world.
• Wheels Within Wheels: Political and economic conflict inside the LaNague Federation earned Wilson the first Prometheus Award and represents his libertarian science-fiction period.
• An Enemy of the State: The LaNague Federation material expands into rebellion, political philosophy, and resistance against centralized power.
• Dydeetown World: A science-fiction mystery explores identity, artificial reproduction, and social divisions through a futuristic investigative story.
• Sims: Genetically engineered simian workers become the center of legal, corporate, and ethical conflict when questions arise about whether they should be treated as property or persons.

These books should not be inserted between Repairman Jack novels solely because they share an author.

Medical thrillers are another distinct Wilson lane

• The Select: A medical-school applicant becomes involved with a prestigious institution whose selection process and research conceal dangerous ethical compromises.
• Implant: Medical technology and political influence intersect when a physician’s work becomes connected to an increasingly dangerous conspiracy.
• Deep as the Marrow: A political kidnapping and the war over drug policy place a physician and his family inside a national crisis.
• Mirage with Matthew J. Costello: Medical science and questions about memory and identity form the basis of a collaborative speculative thriller.

Nocturnia was written with Thomas F. Monteleone

1. Definitely Not Kansas: The Nocturnia story opens with young characters discovering an alternate world whose familiar elements conceal a much darker supernatural reality.
2. Family Secrets (2016): The second novel deepens the mythology and the family connections linking the protagonists to Nocturnia.
3. The Silent Ones (2018): The trilogy reaches its final confrontation as earlier discoveries about the alternate world and its inhabitants come together.

Wardenclyffe belongs much earlier than most books around it

• Wardenclyffe (2018): Wilson reimagines Nikola Tesla’s experimental tower and proposes that a final 1906 test opened something far more dangerous than a route for wireless power.

Although published in 2018, the novella occurs in 1903 to 1906 and is placed near the beginning of Wilson’s official Secret History chronology.

Why chronological order is not the ideal first order

Wilson has published an official Secret History chronology stretching from prehistory through the end of civilization. It includes novels, novellas, and short stories written decades apart.

That chronology is excellent for rereading but can weaken the intended discovery process for a newcomer. Books such as the Young Repairman Jack trilogy, Cold City, Wardenclyffe, and later Secret History additions explain things that were mysteries when the original adult Jack novels appeared.

For a first encounter, beginning with The Tomb and following Jack’s adult publication sequence remains the cleaner route.

The Secret History timeline places seemingly unrelated books together

• The Keep belongs to 1941 even though it opened the published Adversary Cycle.
• Reborn occurs in 1968, before adult Repairman Jack appears.
• Young Repairman Jack takes place in 1983.
• Cold City, Dark City, and Fear City cover Jack’s early New York years.
• The Tomb through The Dark at the End move through the final years before Nightworld.
• Panacea, The God Gene, and The Void Protocol occur during that same hidden historical framework.
• Nightworld is the convergence point where the Adversary Cycle and Repairman Jack reach the apocalypse together.

Repairman Jack short fiction is optional but substantial

Wilson has written many shorter Jack stories that fit between the novels. Rather than forcing every one into a first reading, completionists can use Quick Fixes: Tales of Repairman Jack as a convenient collection.

• Quick Fixes: Collects shorter Repairman Jack cases and incidents that reveal additional fixes, acquaintances, and pieces of Jack’s life outside the full-length novels.
• Scar-Lip Redux: A Repairman Jack graphic novel lets Wilson revisit the rakosh mythology in visual form and deliberately sits outside a rigid placement in the prose timeline.
• Repairman Jack: A Mysterious Profile (2023): A profile-style work examines the character and mythology rather than functioning as another numbered Jack novel.

The most useful first-time Wilson route

1. The Keep: Learn that an ancient conflict exists.
2. The Tomb: Meet Repairman Jack without knowing everything behind his world.
3. Continue Jack through Harbingers: Let the supernatural component grow gradually.
4. Continue through Ground Zero: The Secret History becomes increasingly explicit.
5. Read The Touch, Reborn, and Reprisal before the final convergence if you have not already: These establish characters and events that matter to the apocalypse.
6. Fatal Error and The Dark at the End: Finish Jack’s road to the end.
7. Nightworld: Read the revised edition as the culminating volume.
8. Then go backward: Add Young Jack, the Early Years trilogy, Wardenclyffe, Black Wind, and the wider Secret History for a deeper second pass.

What Wilson has published most recently

Wilson’s official site currently highlights The Upwelling and Lexie as the final two Hidden volumes completing the Secret History of the World. His bibliography lists both as 2024 novels.

In 2026, MidWorld Press also began shipping a new signed limited edition of The Keep. That is a new edition of the 1981 novel, not a new Adversary installment.

The Wilson questions that usually signal a reading-order problem

What is the first Repairman Jack novel?

The Tomb is Jack’s first published novel and the standard starting point for his adult series.

Is The Tomb also an Adversary Cycle book?

Yes. It serves as both the introduction to Repairman Jack and the second published book of the original Adversary Cycle.

Does Repairman Jack end with The Dark at the End?

That novel ends Jack’s main pre-apocalypse sequence, but the larger story concludes in Nightworld.

Should Nightworld be read early because it was originally published in 1992?

No. The revised version was designed to accommodate the expanded Repairman Jack continuity and belongs at the end of the combined story.

Should Young Repairman Jack be read before The Tomb?

Only if you specifically want chronological order. For a first read, The Tomb preserves Jack’s original introduction better.

What comes after the Young Jack trilogy?

Chronologically, the Early Years trilogy begins with Cold City and follows Jack as he establishes himself in New York.

Are Panacea and Repairman Jack connected?

They belong to the same Secret History of the World, although the ICE trilogy follows Laura Fanning and Rick Hayden rather than Jack.

What are The Upwelling and Lexie?

They are the two books of The Hidden and are described by Wilson’s official site as the final volumes of the Secret History of the World.

Do not turn the Secret History into homework on the first read

Wilson’s interconnected chronology is one of the attractions of his work, but readers do not need to understand every hidden reference before opening The Tomb. Jack himself begins without knowing the scale of the forces around him.

Follow Jack’s adult books in publication order, make sure the central Adversary novels are in place before Nightworld, and use the Young Jack, Early Years, ICE, Hidden, and other Secret History books afterward to fill in the centuries of background. That preserves both the mystery of the original novels and the much larger architecture Wilson eventually revealed.