Jack Carr Books in Order (Updated September 9, 2026)

Jack Carr is a former U.S. Navy SEAL and thriller writer whose fiction began with James Reece in The Terminal List. What started as one revenge story has grown into a wider Reece family universe, with seven published James Reece novels, the Tom Reece origin novel Cry Havoc, a separate Chris Walker series beginning with The Fourth Option, and an expanding nonfiction series called Targeted.

The James Reece books should be read in publication order. Reece’s losses, relationships, intelligence connections, health, political enemies, and changing sense of purpose carry directly from one novel to the next. State of Exile is officially James Reece Book 8, but it is not scheduled for publication until October 1, 2027.

Pick the Jack Carr path that fits what you want to read

• For James Reece: start with The Terminal List and read straight through Red Sky Mourning.
• For the Reece family origin story: read Cry Havoc after the published James Reece books on a first read.
• For Tom Reece: Cry Havoc is Book 1 of his historical thriller line and is set during the Vietnam War.
• For Chris Walker: begin the separate Fourth Option series with The Fourth Option.
• For nonfiction: start the Targeted series with Targeted: Beirut.
• Next James Reece book: State of Exile is officially Book 8 but remains upcoming.

The cleanest first-reading approach is publication order rather than historical chronology. Cry Havoc takes place decades before James Reece’s novels, but Carr wrote it after readers already knew the Reece family, making Tom Reece’s story more meaningful as family history revealed later.

James Reece books from revenge to Red Sky Mourning

1. The Terminal List (2018): Navy SEAL commander James Reece returns from a disastrous deployment after his entire team is killed in an ambush, then discovers that the deaths of his teammates and family are connected to a conspiracy reaching into powerful American institutions.
2. True Believer (2019): Reece is a wanted man after his campaign of revenge, but a coordinated wave of terrorist attacks forces the United States to make a deal with him because his past contacts may provide the only path to the people behind the violence.
3. Savage Son (2020): Recovering from brain surgery in Montana, Reece becomes the target of a Russian intelligence and organized-crime operation that turns the ancient contest between hunter and hunted into a deeply personal struggle.
4. The Devil’s Hand (2021): Twenty years after the September 11 attacks, Reece confronts a patient enemy preparing a new assault on the United States while a recently elected president carries secrets connected to his own past.
5. In the Blood (2022): The destruction of a passenger plane in Africa brings Reece’s attention to a Mossad operative he once knew, sending him after the people behind her death while an assassin is simultaneously hunting him.
6. Only the Dead (2023): Reece begins the novel imprisoned while a decades-old political conspiracy involving wealthy and powerful figures moves toward a plan to reshape the United States and remove its remaining opposition.
7. Red Sky Mourning (2024): A rogue Chinese submarine, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and a compromised American political figure converge in a plot that forces Reece back into action when the United States faces a threat designed to attack both its technology and political system.
8. State of Exile (expected October 1, 2027): James Reece returns from self-imposed exile as a crisis involving a downed sixth-generation fighter, stolen technology, conflict between nuclear powers, and AI-enabled weapons makes him the holder of information capable of preventing a much larger war.

The first seven James Reece books are currently available. Keep State of Exile marked as Upcoming until its scheduled 2027 publication rather than counting it among books a reader can already complete.

Why The Terminal List has to be first

The Terminal List establishes the event that shapes everything Reece becomes afterward. His SEAL team is destroyed, his family is murdered, and the institutions he served become part of the conspiracy he is trying to uncover.

The title refers to Reece’s list of people he holds responsible. His campaign against those names changes his legal status, destroys his former life, and directly creates the problem facing him at the beginning of True Believer.

Starting with Book 2 therefore means meeting Reece after the defining events of his life have already happened.

True Believer turns a fugitive into an American asset again

After the first novel, Reece cannot simply return to ordinary military service. He is considered a domestic terrorist because of the killings carried out during his revenge campaign.

A series of coordinated attacks across the Western world changes the equation. The CIA needs Reece’s connection to a former Iraqi commando who may lead investigators toward the network responsible.

This uneasy bargain becomes important throughout the later series. Reece never fully returns to the simple institutional loyalty he possessed before The Terminal List.

Savage Son brings Raife Hastings and the Reece family wilderness into focus

Reece enters Savage Son physically damaged and recovering in Montana with the help of investigative journalist Katie Buranek and longtime friend Raife Hastings.

The setting is important because hunting, family traditions, wilderness skills, and Reece’s relationships outside government service become increasingly significant to his identity.

The Russian effort to hunt Reece also reverses the basic predator relationship of the earlier books. Reece eventually has to become the hunter again.

The Devil’s Hand widens the series from personal enemies to national strategy

The Devil’s Hand is built around the twentieth anniversary of September 11 and asks how adversaries might adapt after watching the United States fight two decades of war.

The threat becomes much larger than an individual assassination mission. Carr combines a hostile foreign power, biological danger, political leadership, covert retaliation, and the strategic consequences of a long war.

By this point, Reece has developed from a man seeking personal revenge into an operator repeatedly drawn into conflicts with national consequences.

In the Blood is one of the most sniper-centered Reece stories

In the Blood begins when a Mossad operative boards an aircraft in Burkina Faso after completing an assassination. Minutes later, the plane is destroyed.

Reece recognizes her among the victims and begins looking for the people responsible. At the same time, an assassin has been hired to eliminate him.

The book draws heavily on Reece’s background as a sniper and places two highly trained killers on paths that increasingly move toward one another.

Only the Dead cannot be separated cleanly from what came before

Reece begins Only the Dead in solitary confinement, which makes his status at the end of earlier books immediately relevant.

The conspiracy he faces also reaches backward into American political history. An assassination from 1980 becomes connected to a modern group attempting to exploit political division, economic instability, and international conflict.

This is one of the clearest examples of why the Reece books work better as a continuing story than as interchangeable military thrillers.

Red Sky Mourning pushes Reece into AI and quantum warfare

Book 7 combines three apparently separate threats. A Chinese submarine moves toward the American coast, a Silicon Valley figure leads breakthroughs in quantum computing and artificial intelligence, and a politician influenced by a foreign power moves close to the presidency.

The connection between these threats involves an artificial intelligence known as Alice, which has retreated into the deepest layers of the internet and continued learning.

Reece has tried to leave violence behind, but his connection to Alice makes him central to whether the technology becomes a defense against the conspiracy or part of the danger.

State of Exile is confirmed, but readers have a long wait

State of Exile is officially listed as James Reece Book 8. The current publisher publication date is October 1, 2027.

The premise links a doomed call from September 11, a next-generation fighter lost over Ukraine, stolen military technology, the destruction of the Taj Mahal, and conflict between two nuclear-armed states.

Reece is living in self-imposed exile when he is pulled into the crisis. He possesses the key to a code that could prevent war, but the knowledge appears to be locked inside a memory he does not realize he has.

Until the novel is published, Red Sky Mourning remains the latest available James Reece book.

Tom Reece begins a second generation of the Terminal List universe

• Cry Havoc (2025): In 1968, James Reece’s father Tom is serving his third SEAL deployment in Vietnam when an assignment with MACV-SOG draws him into a CIA operation spanning Southeast Asia and Cold War intelligence centers far beyond the battlefield.

Cry Havoc is Tom Reece Book 1 and the first deep exploration of an earlier generation of the Reece family. Carr describes it as a foundation story for the Terminal List universe.

The story moves through Saigon, Da Nang, the A Shau Valley, Laos, Hanoi, Bangkok, Moscow, Berlin, London, and Washington while connecting special operations in Vietnam with old-style Cold War espionage.

Should Cry Havoc be read before The Terminal List?

Chronologically, yes. Cry Havoc takes place in 1968, decades before James Reece’s story begins.

For a first reading, publication order is better. Start with James Reece and read Cry Havoc after Red Sky Mourning. Carr wrote Tom’s story for an audience already familiar with the Reece name and the family traditions that shape James.

On a reread, starting with Tom in 1968 can create an interesting generational chronology.

A Reece family chronology for returning readers

1. Cry Havoc: Begin with Tom Reece in Vietnam and the CIA during 1968.
2. The Terminal List: Move forward to James Reece and the destruction of his SEAL team and family.
3. True Believer: Follow James from fugitive status back into intelligence operations.
4. Savage Son: Continue through his recovery and conflict with Russian enemies.
5. The Devil’s Hand: Move into a national strategic threat twenty years after September 11.
6. In the Blood: Follow Reece’s hunt for an assassin.
7. Only the Dead: Continue the political conspiracy while Reece is imprisoned.
8. Red Sky Mourning: Reach the current published endpoint of James Reece.
9. State of Exile: Add Book 8 when it is released in 2027.

This chronology is best saved for readers who already know the series. Publication order preserves Carr’s gradual expansion from one modern SEAL protagonist into a multigenerational family universe.

The Fourth Option starts an entirely different Jack Carr hero

• The Fourth Option (2026): Former Navy SEAL and CIA Ground Branch operative Chris Walker is pulled back from the edge of suicide when the widow of a fallen teammate asks for help after losing her son to the opioid crisis, leading Walker toward institutional corruption and his own form of outlaw justice.

The Fourth Option was published in May 2026 and begins a new series rather than continuing James Reece.

Chris Walker travels with his Belgian Malinois and lives from an off-grid Volkswagen camper stocked for the kind of work he once performed professionally. Carr frames him as a modern version of the Western gunslinger who arrives where institutions have failed.

Chris Walker and James Reece should stay on separate shelves

Both men are former Navy SEALs with intelligence experience, but The Fourth Option is explicitly the beginning of a new series.

Readers should therefore not label it James Reece Book 8. The official James Reece Book 8 is State of Exile.

Whether future fiction creates a crossover remains a separate question. For the current reading order, Chris Walker belongs in his own lane.

Targeted nonfiction books in order

Carr has also begun a nonfiction series with historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist James M. Scott. Each Targeted volume examines a major terrorist attack through archival research, interviews, military records, investigative material, and the long search for accountability.

1. Targeted: Beirut (2024): Carr and Scott reconstruct the October 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks and headquarters in Beirut, which killed 241 American service members and became a defining event in the history of modern terrorism and U.S. involvement in the Middle East.
2. Targeted: Pan Am 103 (expected April 13, 2027): The second volume examines the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, the deaths of 270 people, the international investigation, the search for those responsible, and the decades-long pursuit of justice.

Targeted: Pan Am 103 has been announced and is available for preorder, but it remains unpublished as of September 9, 2026.

The Targeted books are nonfiction and should not be inserted into James Reece chronology simply because they examine terrorism, intelligence, and military history familiar from Carr’s novels.

Jack Carr books by publication era

2018 to 2020: James Reece is established

1. The Terminal List (2018): Reece turns against the powerful people responsible for destroying his family and team.
2. True Believer (2019): The wanted fugitive is forced into an uneasy partnership with the American government.
3. Savage Son (2020): Reece recovers in Montana and becomes prey in a Russian-directed hunt.

2021 to 2024: the threats become larger

4. The Devil’s Hand (2021): A foreign adversary develops an attack designed for an America shaped by twenty years of war.
5. In the Blood (2022): Reece pursues the killer behind an attack connected to a Mossad operative from his past.
6. Only the Dead (2023): A long-running political conspiracy moves forward while Reece is imprisoned.
7. Red Sky Mourning (2024): China, quantum computing, AI, and political manipulation converge.

2024 to 2026: Carr expands beyond one series

1. Targeted: Beirut (2024): The first nonfiction investigation.
2. Cry Havoc (2025): Tom Reece takes the fictional universe back to Vietnam in 1968.
3. The Fourth Option (2026): Chris Walker launches a new modern gunslinger thriller series.

This publication view shows the major change in Carr’s bibliography. The early career is almost entirely James Reece, while the current phase has expanded into historical Reece fiction, another contemporary protagonist, and researched nonfiction.

Which books are actually part of the Terminal List universe?

The seven published James Reece novels clearly form the core Terminal List series.

Cry Havoc is explicitly presented as an origin story for the Terminal List universe and follows James’s father, Tom Reece.

State of Exile is officially the eighth James Reece novel and will continue the main series when published.

The Fourth Option begins a separate Chris Walker series and should not currently be numbered with Reece.

The Targeted books are nonfiction rather than part of any fictional universe.

A first-time Jack Carr reading route

1. The Terminal List: Meet James Reece at the moment his old life is destroyed.
2. True Believer: Follow the direct consequences of his revenge.
3. Savage Son: Continue Reece’s recovery and the Russian threat.
4. The Devil’s Hand: Move into the broader strategic phase of the series.
5. In the Blood: Follow Reece’s sniper-centered hunt.
6. Only the Dead: Continue the political conspiracy.
7. Red Sky Mourning: Reach the current published James Reece endpoint.
8. Cry Havoc: Go back to Tom Reece and discover the family’s Vietnam-era history.
9. The Fourth Option: Start Chris Walker’s separate series.
10. Targeted: Beirut: Move into Carr’s nonfiction if you want the real history behind themes common in his thrillers.

When the upcoming books arrive, add Targeted: Pan Am 103 to the nonfiction shelf in April 2027 and State of Exile directly after Red Sky Mourning in October 2027.

Chronological order is possible, but publication order reveals the family better

A strict fictional chronology would begin with Tom Reece in Cry Havoc before moving decades forward to James in The Terminal List.

That is a valid rereading strategy, but Carr created the universe in the opposite direction. Readers met James first and only later learned more about the father whose experience helped shape the family traditions James inherited.

Publication order therefore makes Tom’s story feel like newly uncovered history rather than preliminary exposition.

What’s published and what’s still coming?

• Red Sky Mourning: latest currently published James Reece novel.
• Cry Havoc: published Tom Reece Book 1 and Terminal List universe origin story.
• The Fourth Option: published in May 2026 and begins the Chris Walker series.
• State of Exile: upcoming James Reece Book 8, scheduled for October 1, 2027.
• Targeted: Beirut: published nonfiction Book 1.
• Targeted: Pan Am 103: upcoming nonfiction Book 2, scheduled for April 13, 2027.

This distinction matters because Jack Carr’s current bibliography contains more than one active line. A preorder page does not mean an upcoming book should be counted as already released.

Questions readers have as the Jack Carr universe expands

What is Jack Carr’s first novel?

The Terminal List, published in 2018, was Carr’s debut novel and introduced James Reece.

How many James Reece books are published?

Seven James Reece novels are published as of September 2026, from The Terminal List through Red Sky Mourning.

What is James Reece Book 8?

State of Exile is officially James Reece Book 8. It is scheduled for October 1, 2027.

Should James Reece be read in order?

Yes. Each book has a principal threat, but Reece’s legal status, personal losses, relationships, intelligence connections, health, and recurring enemies develop from one novel to the next.

Who is Tom Reece?

Tom Reece is James Reece’s father. Cry Havoc follows him as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam in 1968 and begins a historical branch of the Reece family story.

Is Cry Havoc a James Reece book?

It belongs to the wider Terminal List universe, but James is not the protagonist. Cry Havoc is Tom Reece Book 1.

Should Cry Havoc be read first chronologically?

It can be on a reread, but publication order is better for new readers. Meet James first, then use Cry Havoc to uncover the family history behind him.

Is The Fourth Option part of the James Reece series?

No. The Fourth Option begins a new series featuring former SEAL and CIA Ground Branch operative Chris Walker.

Who is Chris Walker?

Chris Walker is the protagonist of The Fourth Option. He is a disillusioned former Navy SEAL and CIA Ground Branch operative who becomes a modern gunslinger after institutional systems fail someone connected to a teammate he lost in Afghanistan.

Does Jack Carr write nonfiction?

Yes. Carr and historian James M. Scott co-write the Targeted nonfiction series, beginning with Targeted: Beirut.

What is Targeted: Pan Am 103?

It is the second Targeted nonfiction book. It examines the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie and is scheduled for publication in April 2027.

What is Jack Carr’s latest published novel?

The Fourth Option, published in May 2026, is Carr’s latest published novel as of September 9, 2026. It launches Chris Walker’s new series.

What is the latest James Reece novel?

Red Sky Mourning, published in 2024, remains the latest available James Reece novel while readers wait for State of Exile.

The order that makes Jack Carr’s expanding universe easiest to follow

Begin with James Reece in The Terminal List and follow all seven available novels through Red Sky Mourning. Then read Cry Havoc as the Tom Reece origin story. This preserves the order in which Carr gradually revealed the Reece family rather than starting with historical backstory.

Keep The Fourth Option separate because Chris Walker begins a new series, and keep Targeted on the nonfiction shelf. When State of Exile arrives in 2027, it belongs directly after Red Sky Mourning as James Reece Book 8.