Kyle Mills Books in Order (Updated September 9, 2026)

Kyle Mills is an American political and action-thriller writer whose career spans his own Mark Beamon and Fade series, standalone novels, three entries in Robert Ludlum’s Covert-One franchise, and nine Mitch Rapp novels continuing the series created by Vince Flynn.

Mills’s bibliography changed direction again in 2025 when he returned to Salam al-Fayed, better known as Fade, twenty years after introducing the character. Fade In launched a continuing Fade series after Mills ended his period as the Mitch Rapp continuation author with Code Red.

Kyle Mills has four very different reading lanes

• For FBI thrillers: Begin Mark Beamon with Rising Phoenix.
• For Mills’s current series: Read Fade before Fade In.
• For Mitch Rapp: Mills’s contribution starts with The Survivor, but first-time Rapp readers should begin with Vince Flynn’s earlier novels.
• For Robert Ludlum’s Covert-One: Mills enters the franchise with The Ares Decision.
• For self-contained thrillers: Choose among Burn Factor, Smoke Screen, The Second Horseman, Lords of Corruption, and The Immortalists.

Mark Beamon books in order

FBI Special Agent Mark Beamon is talented, cynical, insubordinate, and frequently at odds with the bureaucracy employing him. His ability to solve cases is repeatedly complicated by his inability to behave the way senior officials want him to behave.

1. Rising Phoenix (1997): Beamon investigates a radical campaign designed to end America’s drug problem by deliberately poisoning illegal narcotics and making every dose potentially fatal.
2. Storming Heaven (1998): A wealthy and apparently respectable religious movement becomes the focus of Beamon’s investigation after a kidnapping exposes the darker power operating behind the organization.
3. Free Fall (2000): Beamon becomes involved in a case connecting a murdered climber, political corruption, and a crooked presidential election while elite rock climber Darby Moore is drawn into the investigation.
4. Sphere of Influence (2002): Beamon confronts a complex international conspiracy involving organized crime, intelligence interests, political manipulation, and forces whose reach extends far beyond a normal FBI case.
5. Darkness Falls (2007): A scientist capable of changing the future of energy disappears, and Beamon becomes involved in a crisis centered on what would happen if the world’s oil supply suddenly became unavailable.

Kyle Mills himself gives this exact order: Rising Phoenix, Storming Heaven, Free Fall, Sphere of Influence, then Darkness Falls.

Why Mark Beamon should be read from the beginning

Each Beamon book has a self-contained investigation, but Beamon’s standing inside the FBI changes over time. His relationship with authority is almost a second continuing conflict alongside the crimes and conspiracies.

Rising Phoenix is also Mills’s debut novel and establishes several themes that recur throughout his career: morally ambiguous choices, unconventional protagonists, antagonists who believe their actions are justified, and institutions that do not always behave rationally.

Rising Phoenix started with one provocative question

The first novel asks whether America’s illegal drug market could be destroyed by making narcotics so dangerous that users would become afraid to consume them.

The people behind the poisoning campaign believe they are attacking the drug problem itself rather than simply murdering individual users. Beamon has to stop them while operating inside a system that may disagree about both the problem and how urgently it should be addressed.

Storming Heaven turns toward cult power

Mills built his second Beamon novel around the idea of an enormously powerful religious movement that appears mainstream enough to command wealth and influence while concealing far more dangerous behavior.

The investigation pushes Beamon into conflict with an organization capable of protecting itself through loyalty, money, and institutional reach rather than relying only on conventional criminals.

Free Fall brings Mills’s climbing background into the series

Mills is an experienced climber, but he has explained that he did not want Free Fall to become simply a novel about climbing.

The climbing world provides a contrast with Washington political ambition. Darby Moore, an elite climber with an unconventional philosophy of life, becomes part of Beamon’s investigation into corruption surrounding a presidential election.

Sphere of Influence widens Beamon’s world

Sphere of Influence moves beyond the more domestically focused investigations of the first books and becomes a larger international thriller.

Mills has cited Tom Clancy’s The Cardinal of the Kremlin as an inspiration for its scale and complexity. It remains one of the Beamon books he has described as a personal favorite.

Darkness Falls is the latest Mark Beamon novel

The fifth book grew from Mills’s interest in the vulnerability of global energy supply.

The disappearance of a scientist with revolutionary work draws Beamon into a threat involving oil, environmental extremism, and the possibility that modern civilization could be destabilized through its dependence on energy.

Mills calls it the last Beamon book “so far.” No sixth Mark Beamon novel has been announced as of September 2026.

Fade books in order

Salam al-Fayed, known as Fade, is a former Navy SEAL and one of Mills’s most unconventional protagonists. Mills originally created him for a single book and believed the character’s story had ended. Two decades later, he resurrected Fade and built a new continuing series around him.

1. Fade (2005): Former Navy SEAL Salam al-Fayed turns against the people trying to force him back into black operations after he believes the government abandoned him, creating a pursuit in which his closest friend is also one of his principal targets.
2. Fade In (2025): After surviving a sniper’s bullet and waking from a coma paralyzed and wanted by authorities, Fade accepts experimental medical treatment from a secret organization run by enormously wealthy elites and is sent against a catastrophic threat emerging from China.

Fade In is not a reboot. It brings back the same Salam al-Fayed introduced twenty years earlier and directly relies on his survival from the first novel.

Why Fade looked like a standalone for twenty years

Mills has explained that he originally intended Fade to be one book. The idea was that the character was effectively doomed, and Mills himself believed Fade was dead when he completed the manuscript.

The character remained popular with readers and continued occupying Mills’s imagination. After Mills decided to leave the Mitch Rapp series, Fade became the protagonist he wanted to revisit for a changing geopolitical and technological world.

Fade In launches Kyle Mills’s current era

At the beginning of Fade In, Fade has already been declared clinically dead twice in his life and expects a police sniper’s bullet to make the third time permanent.

Instead, he wakes from a coma with severe paralysis. A secret private organization offers him a new identity, advanced medical treatment, and rehabilitation, but the price is service in an elite paramilitary unit.

The people controlling that organization believe governments are no longer capable of managing global instability. Fade therefore has to confront not only the external threat but the possibility that the people paying him to save humanity may intend to rule it.

Kyle Mills’s three Covert-One novels

Robert Ludlum’s Covert-One is a multi-author franchise centered on a secret American organization responding to biological, technological, and geopolitical threats. Mills contributed three books featuring characters including Army medical specialist Jon Smith and CIA operative Randi Russell.

1. The Ares Decision (2011): An unusual parasitic infection makes victims exceptionally violent and physically dangerous, sending Jon Smith and Covert-One toward Africa and a biological threat that can be deliberately weaponized.
2. The Utopia Experiment (2013): A brain-integrated device called the Merge promises extraordinary improvements in human perception and information access but becomes dangerous when its military and behavioral possibilities are exploited.
3. The Patriot Attack (2015): A conflict between China and Japan escalates through next-generation weapons, artificial intelligence, autonomous combat systems, and technologies capable of bypassing traditional military limitations.

These are books eight, ten, and twelve of the larger Covert-One franchise rather than a separate three-book Kyle Mills series. Readers following all of Covert-One should keep the other authorized authors’ novels between them.

Mills’s nine Mitch Rapp novels in order

After Vince Flynn’s death, Kyle Mills was selected to continue Mitch Rapp. His first assignment was particularly demanding because Flynn had already begun a storyline that needed to be completed.

1. The Survivor (2015): Mills completes the Joe Rickman storyline left by Vince Flynn as information arranged for release after Rickman’s death threatens CIA officers and clandestine operations worldwide.
2. Order to Kill (2016): Rapp investigates missing Pakistani nuclear material and uncovers a Russian strategy designed to manipulate instability in the Middle East.
3. Enemy of the State (2017): Political constraints force Rapp outside normal CIA command as he builds his own team to confront powerful Saudi-linked enemies.
4. Red War (2018): A seriously ill Russian leader attempts to secure his legacy through military aggression, putting Rapp in a confrontation with a nuclear-armed state.
5. Lethal Agent (2019): Rapp hunts an ISIS leader with access to a biological weapon while American election politics complicate the intelligence response.
6. Total Power (2020): A devastating attack on America’s electrical grid produces infrastructure collapse and social chaos, forcing Rapp to hunt enemies operating inside a national emergency.
7. Enemy at the Gates (2021): Rapp protects billionaire Nicholas Ward while Irene Kennedy uses the situation to expose a highly placed intelligence mole.
8. Oath of Loyalty (2022): Rapp’s conflict with President Anthony Cook becomes deeply personal when people close to Rapp are threatened and political power is turned directly against him.
9. Code Red (2023): Rapp accepts a favor for crime lord Damian Losa and discovers a Russian plan to use a new narcotic as a tool of asymmetric warfare against the West.

Code Red was Mills’s final Mitch Rapp novel. Don Bentley took over the series afterward.

Where Kyle Mills enters the Mitch Rapp series

New readers should not begin Mitch Rapp with The Survivor. Vince Flynn had already written thirteen Rapp novels, and Mills deliberately continued established relationships, enemies, and CIA history.

The clean handoff is:

1. The Last Man: Vince Flynn establishes the Joe Rickman crisis.
2. The Survivor: Kyle Mills resolves the consequences of Rickman’s plan.
3. Order to Kill through Code Red: Mills develops his own Rapp-era threats while preserving the existing cast.

Kyle Mills standalone novels, with what each one is about

1. Burn Factor (2001): FBI employee Quinn Barry discovers an unexpected DNA connection among murders while working on a database project and begins investigating a serial-killer pattern that powerful people would rather keep hidden.
2. Smoke Screen (2003): Mills turns toward the tobacco industry in a first-person corporate thriller about powerful companies, public perception, liability, and the people caught inside a business under political and legal attack.
3. The Second Horseman (2006): Criminal mastermind Brandon Vale is deliberately broken out of prison because intelligence officials need his skills to stop the sale of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.
4. Lords of Corruption (2009): An American working in Africa becomes entangled in corruption, international aid, political power, and organizations whose public humanitarian mission hides dangerous private interests.
5. The Immortalists (2011): Dr. Richard Draman searches desperately for a cure to save his terminally ill daughter and discovers secret medical experiments conducted by a hidden organization pursuing extraordinary control over human longevity.

These novels do not share continuing protagonists and can be read in any order.

Burn Factor is Mills’s serial-killer thriller

Quinn Barry wants to become an FBI agent but is still working in a technical role when a database project reveals a DNA connection among separate murders.

Mills has described Burn Factor as his only major move into the serial-killer genre. The book still retains his political-thriller instincts because Quinn’s discovery raises institutional questions as well as criminal ones.

Smoke Screen is deliberately unlike the Mark Beamon books

Mills wrote Smoke Screen in the first person and placed the tobacco industry at the center of the story.

The novel sits closer to a corporate thriller than his FBI or intelligence books and examines business power, public hostility, political pressure, and manipulation from inside a controversial industry.

The Second Horseman uses a criminal as the solution

Brandon Vale is not a conventional intelligence hero. He is a highly capable criminal whose abilities become useful when national-security officials confront a weapons deal they cannot stop through ordinary methods.

Mills has compared the story’s tone to combining a complex heist with an international covert mission, making it one of the easiest standalone choices for readers who enjoy unconventional teams.

Lords of Corruption comes from Mills’s time in Africa

Mills developed the novel after living in Africa and becoming interested in the intersection between international aid, foreign organizations, money, politics, and local power.

The story follows a protagonist drawn into a system where nominally benevolent institutions can become entangled with corruption and violence.

The Immortalists makes medicine the battleground

Richard Draman is not an experienced spy or soldier. His motivation is personal: his daughter is dying.

His search for a treatment exposes secret medical research whose implications reach far beyond one patient’s survival. That makes the book one of Mills’s clearest examples of an ordinary expert being forced into the kind of danger usually handled by his professional operatives.

Kyle Mills books in overall publication order

1. Rising Phoenix (1997): Mark Beamon investigates poisoned illegal drugs.
2. Storming Heaven (1998): Beamon confronts a powerful religious organization.
3. Free Fall (2000): Climbing and presidential corruption intersect.
4. Burn Factor (2001): Quinn Barry finds a DNA pattern connecting murders.
5. Sphere of Influence (2002): Beamon enters a larger international conspiracy.
6. Smoke Screen (2003): A corporate thriller centered on the tobacco industry.
7. Fade (2005): Former Navy SEAL Salam al-Fayed turns against the black-operations world pursuing him.
8. The Second Horseman (2006): A criminal mastermind is recruited to stop a WMD sale.
9. Darkness Falls (2007): Mark Beamon faces a crisis involving global oil dependence.
10. Lords of Corruption (2009): International aid and African political corruption collide.
11. The Ares Decision (2011): Mills enters Robert Ludlum’s Covert-One franchise with a parasitic bioweapon threat.
12. The Immortalists (2011): A father uncovers secret longevity research while searching for a cure for his daughter.
13. The Utopia Experiment (2013): Brain-computer integration becomes a Covert-One threat.
14. The Patriot Attack (2015): Autonomous military technology escalates a China-Japan confrontation.
15. The Survivor (2015): Mills takes over Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp series.
16. Order to Kill (2016): Missing Pakistani nuclear material leads toward Russian manipulation.
17. Enemy of the State (2017): Rapp operates outside official CIA channels.
18. Red War (2018): An ailing Russian leader risks major war.
19. Lethal Agent (2019): Rapp confronts biological terrorism.
20. Total Power (2020): America’s electrical grid is destroyed.
21. Enemy at the Gates (2021): Rapp protects Nicholas Ward while searching for an insider.
22. Oath of Loyalty (2022): Rapp’s conflict with the American presidency becomes personal.
23. Code Red (2023): Mills closes his Mitch Rapp era with a Russian asymmetric-warfare plot.
24. Fade In (2025): Salam al-Fayed returns after twenty years and begins Mills’s new continuing series.

A Kyle Mills reading route that focuses only on his own characters

1. Rising Phoenix: Begin with Mark Beamon and Mills’s debut.
2. Storming Heaven: Continue Beamon’s conflict with powerful institutions.
3. Free Fall: Add political corruption and Mills’s climbing background.
4. Sphere of Influence: Move Beamon into a larger international thriller.
5. Darkness Falls: Finish the current Beamon sequence.
6. Fade: Meet Salam al-Fayed in the novel originally intended to contain his entire story.
7. Fade In: Continue with Mills’s current series and the resurrected Fade.

This route avoids licensed continuation work and gives readers the two recurring protagonists created entirely by Mills.

What happened after Code Red?

Mills announced that Code Red would be his final Mitch Rapp novel. He wanted to return to reading the Rapp series as a fan and to develop a protagonist whose future he controlled completely.

Don Bentley became the next Mitch Rapp continuation author, while Mills returned to Fade. Fade In was released in July 2025 and launched the new phase of Mills’s career.

Kyle Mills current publication status

Fade In is Kyle Mills’s latest novel as of September 2026. Its paperback edition was released in August 2026.

Mills describes Fade In as the start of his new Fade series, meaning the character’s return is intended as an ongoing project rather than another one-book resurrection. No later Fade novel has been published as of this update.

Kyle Mills reading order FAQs

What Kyle Mills book should I read first?

Rising Phoenix is the best starting point for Mills’s early career. Fade is the better choice if you want the character he is currently writing.

How many Mark Beamon books are there?

There are five: Rising Phoenix, Storming Heaven, Free Fall, Sphere of Influence, and Darkness Falls.

Is Fade In a sequel to Fade?

Yes. It brings back the same Salam al-Fayed twenty years after the first novel and begins a continuing Fade series.

How many Fade books are there?

There are two published novels as of this update: Fade and Fade In.

How many Mitch Rapp books did Kyle Mills write?

Mills wrote nine Mitch Rapp novels, beginning with The Survivor and ending with Code Red.

Did Kyle Mills create Mitch Rapp?

No. Vince Flynn created Mitch Rapp. Mills became the authorized continuation author after Flynn’s death.

Which Covert-One books did Kyle Mills write?

He wrote The Ares Decision, The Utopia Experiment, and The Patriot Attack.

What is Kyle Mills’s newest book?

Fade In, first published in July 2025, remains his newest novel as of September 2026.

The clearest way through Kyle Mills’s bibliography

Start by separating the books Mills created from the franchises he continued. Read Mark Beamon from Rising Phoenix through Darkness Falls, then read Fade before Fade In if you want his own recurring heroes.

Read his standalone novels independently. Treat The Ares Decision, The Utopia Experiment, and The Patriot Attack as part of Robert Ludlum’s larger Covert-One sequence, and begin the Mitch Rapp franchise with Vince Flynn rather than jumping directly into The Survivor. This keeps actual authorship and series continuity clear while still showing how much of Mills’s career has been spent moving between his own worlds and major inherited thriller franchises.