Larry Collins Books in Order (Updated September 9, 2026)

Larry Collins was an American journalist and author whose books combine deeply researched history, espionage, terrorism, political conspiracy, war, intelligence agencies, and real-world international crises. He is especially associated with his long collaboration with French journalist Dominique Lapierre.

Collins and Lapierre produced major works of narrative history including Is Paris Burning?, O Jerusalem!, and Freedom at Midnight. They later moved into fiction with The Fifth Horseman and returned to collaboration for Collins’s final novel, Is New York Burning?.

Collins also wrote several solo thrillers, including Fall from Grace, Maze, Black Eagles, Tomorrow Belongs to Us, and The Road to Armageddon. These are standalones rather than a continuing character series, although his later geopolitical novels share interests in the CIA, Iran, nuclear weapons, terrorism, and Middle Eastern conflict.

Where a New Larry Collins Reader Can Begin

1. Start with Is Paris Burning? if you want the Collins and Lapierre method of reconstructing history through extensive reporting and scene-by-scene narrative.
2. Start with The Fifth Horseman for a geopolitical thriller involving nuclear terrorism in New York.
3. Start with Fall from Grace for solo Collins espionage and World War II deception.
4. Start with Maze if Cold War psychological warfare and intelligence experiments interest you.
5. Start with O Jerusalem! for the conflict surrounding the creation of Israel.
6. Start with Freedom at Midnight for the end of British rule in India and the violence surrounding Partition.

Larry Collins Novels in Publication Order

Collins did not build a conventional recurring-character franchise. His novels should therefore be treated as individual thrillers, with collaborations clearly separated from his solo work.

1. The Fifth Horseman (1980, with Dominique Lapierre): Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi uses a hidden nuclear weapon in New York to force political concessions, leaving American authorities with only a short period to locate the bomb before an entire city can be destroyed.
2. Fall from Grace (1985): French agent Catherine Pradier works inside the Allied deception surrounding D-Day and gradually realizes that British intelligence may sacrifice her if doing so helps convince Germany that the main invasion will come at Calais rather than Normandy.
3. Maze (1989): The United States and Soviet Union become locked in a covert struggle over experiments in psychological influence and mind control that could create a weapon more difficult to detect than missiles or conventional espionage.
4. Black Eagles (1993): Two American agents find themselves on opposing sides of an operation connected with Manuel Noriega’s Panama, drug trafficking, intelligence agencies, and the enormous profits moving through the cocaine trade.
5. Tomorrow Belongs to Us (1998/1999): Former CIA Near East specialist Jim Duffy is called back into service after evidence suggests Iran has obtained nuclear warheads and is financing a plan against Israel through international heroin trafficking.
6. The Road to Armageddon (2003): Jim Duffy is again recruited when Iranian interests connected with the heroin trade appear to possess nuclear weapons acquired after the collapse of Soviet power and may be preparing a catastrophic attack.
7. Is New York Burning? (2004/2005, with Dominique Lapierre): A Palestinian terrorist acquires a nuclear bomb and hides it in New York, demanding an Israeli withdrawal while American officials race to find the device before the deadline expires.

Continuity note: Most of these novels are independent. Tomorrow Belongs to Us and The Road to Armageddon are the closest pair because both use CIA operative Jim Duffy and a related Iran, heroin, and nuclear-threat framework.

The Fifth Horseman

The Fifth Horseman was Collins and Lapierre’s first major work of fiction after years of collaborative narrative history.

The premise is built around a nuclear bomb hidden in New York City and a political ultimatum issued by Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. American officials know the weapon exists but cannot simply evacuate or search a city of millions without creating panic and possibly alerting the terrorists.

The novel follows political leaders, police, intelligence officers, bomb specialists, and ordinary people as the countdown continues.

Standalone: It does not share characters with Is New York Burning?, despite both using New York and nuclear terrorism.

Fall from Grace and Operation Fortitude

Fall from Grace is rooted in the real Allied deception campaign that preceded the Normandy landings.

Operation Fortitude attempted to convince German commanders that the main Allied invasion would land in the Pas-de-Calais. Fictional French operative Catherine Pradier becomes part of the deception and must transmit information credible enough to keep German forces away from Normandy.

The problem for Catherine is that a successful intelligence deception may require her own death. If the Germans discover too early that they have been manipulated, the entire invasion could be endangered.

Alternate title: French editions are commonly titled Fortitude. That is the same novel, not another Larry Collins book.

Maze

Maze moves from World War II espionage into a late-Cold War struggle over the human mind.

American and Soviet researchers explore whether thoughts, behavior, perception, or decision-making can be influenced through techniques that conventional intelligence agencies cannot easily detect.

The resulting conflict is less about stealing military plans than about determining whether a government can control people without their knowledge.

Standalone: None of the characters need to be known from Fall from Grace.

Black Eagles

Black Eagles uses the intersection of American intelligence work, Manuel Noriega’s Panama, and the cocaine trade.

Two American agents believe they are serving their country but find themselves moving toward direct opposition as government policy, intelligence operations, criminal money, and the political realities of the drug war become increasingly difficult to separate.

Collins uses his journalist’s interest in institutions to show how criminal organizations can exploit banking, politics, government secrecy, and demand inside the United States rather than functioning as isolated street gangs.

Publication note: Some catalogues show 1992, 1993, or later paperback dates. The novel belongs to Collins’s early-1990s solo period.

Tomorrow Belongs to Us

Tomorrow Belongs to Us introduces former CIA officer Jim Duffy as a Near East specialist who would prefer to remain retired.

The Agency believes Iranian interests have acquired several nuclear warheads and are using revenue from the heroin trade to finance a plan known as Operation Khalid.

The proposed target is Israel, while the money and materials move through a web connecting Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Europe, banking systems, intelligence services, and weapons suppliers.

Duffy is brought back because his regional knowledge and experience make him one of the few operatives capable of penetrating the network.

First Jim Duffy thriller: Readers who want both Duffy books should begin here.

The Road to Armageddon

The Road to Armageddon returns to Jim Duffy and again uses the connection between narcotics money and nuclear proliferation.

CIA officer Frank Williams approaches Duffy after evidence suggests Iranian buyers have obtained nuclear weapons from the collapsing Soviet military system.

The same international heroin trade moving opium from Afghanistan through Iran and Turkey generates the money needed to finance covert procurement.

Duffy has little desire to work for the Agency that pushed him aside, but the possibility of nuclear weapons reaching extremist hands forces him back into the field.

Read after Tomorrow Belongs to Us for the clearest Jim Duffy progression.

Is New York Burning?

Is New York Burning? reunited Collins and Lapierre for their final novel together.

A Palestinian terrorist seeking to force Israel back to its pre-1967 borders obtains a nuclear weapon through a chain involving Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Pakistan, and the illicit nuclear market.

The bomb is moved into New York. American officials have five days to locate it or find a political solution capable of preventing detonation.

The novel blends fictional terrorists and investigators with fictionalized versions of contemporary political figures including George W. Bush, Ariel Sharon, Pervez Musharraf, Condoleezza Rice, and Michael Bloomberg.

Original publication: The French edition appeared in 2004, while the English-language edition followed in 2005.

Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre Books in Order

The Collins and Lapierre partnership began with history and biography before moving into fiction.

1. Is Paris Burning? (1964/1965): The authors reconstruct the liberation of Paris in August 1944, including Hitler’s order that the city be destroyed, German hesitation, French resistance, Allied military decisions, and the final collapse of occupation.
2. Or I’ll Dress You in Mourning (1968): Collins and Lapierre tell the life of Spanish bullfighter Manuel Benítez, known as El Cordobés, using his rise from poverty to fame to examine the social transformation of postwar Spain.
3. O Jerusalem! (1972): The authors reconstruct the end of the British Mandate, the struggle over Jerusalem, Jewish and Arab military preparations, and the 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel.
4. Freedom at Midnight (1975): The story follows Lord Mountbatten’s final months as Viceroy, Indian independence, Partition, mass migration, communal violence, the role of Gandhi, and Gandhi’s assassination in January 1948.
5. The Fifth Horseman (1980): The partnership moves into fiction with a nuclear-terrorism thriller centered on a bomb hidden in New York City.
6. Is New York Burning? (2004/2005): More than two decades later, the pair return to nuclear terrorism in New York through a post-September 11 geopolitical scenario.

These books do not form a series in the fictional sense. Publication order simply shows the development of the Collins and Lapierre partnership.

Is Paris Burning?

The title comes from Adolf Hitler’s reported demand to know whether Paris had been destroyed as ordered.

Collins and Lapierre reconstruct the final days of German occupation through Nazi leadership, French resistance groups, Allied commanders, political figures, soldiers, and civilians.

The book is narrative history rather than a novel, although its scene-based structure and use of individual viewpoints give it the pacing of historical fiction.

Date note: The original French work appeared in 1964, while the English edition is commonly dated 1965.

Or I’ll Dress You in Mourning

The subject of Or I’ll Dress You in Mourning is Manuel Benítez Pérez, better known as El Cordobés.

Born into poverty in Spain, he became one of the country’s most famous bullfighters and a symbol of a younger generation emerging from the deprivation and authoritarianism that followed the Spanish Civil War.

The authors use his biography to tell a larger story about Spanish society, ambition, spectacle, class, violence, and change.

O Jerusalem!

O Jerusalem! focuses on the period surrounding the creation of Israel and the battle for Jerusalem.

Collins and Lapierre draw on interviews and documentary research to follow Jewish fighters, Palestinian Arabs, British officials, Arab armies, political leaders, and ordinary civilians.

The result is not a sequel to Is Paris Burning?. It is another self-contained narrative history using the same reporting method.

Freedom at Midnight

Freedom at Midnight begins with Britain’s decision to leave India and Lord Louis Mountbatten’s appointment as the final Viceroy.

The book follows negotiations involving Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Mahatma Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel, British officials, and others as independence becomes inseparable from the decision to partition British India.

Partition then produces mass migration and communal violence, while Gandhi attempts to prevent further bloodshed before his assassination in 1948.

Standalone history: No earlier Collins and Lapierre book is required.

The Secrets of D-Day

Collins also wrote a non-fiction work on the Normandy invasion that appeared in French as Le Jour du Miracle and is commonly listed in English bibliographies as The Secrets of D-Day.

• The Secrets of D-Day / Le Jour du Miracle (1994): Collins reconstructs the planning, deception, command decisions, mistakes, weather risks, military preparations, and battlefield uncertainty that surrounded the Allied landing in Normandy.

The work should not be confused with Fall from Grace. Both involve D-Day and Allied deception, but Fall from Grace is a fictional espionage novel while The Secrets of D-Day is historical non-fiction.

Tomorrow Belongs to Us and The Road to Armageddon

These two novels form the closest thing Collins has to a recurring thriller sequence.

1. Tomorrow Belongs to Us: Jim Duffy is recalled because Iran may possess nuclear warheads and be using heroin profits to finance an attack on Israel.
2. The Road to Armageddon: Duffy returns when another Iranian nuclear threat emerges through the same broad world of narcotics finance, covert procurement, intelligence work, and extremist violence.

Recommended order: Read Tomorrow Belongs to Us first because it establishes Duffy as a retired CIA Near East specialist before he is called back again in the later novel.

Books That Are Often Mistaken for Separate Titles

1. Fall from Grace and Fortitude: these are alternate-language or market titles for the same World War II espionage novel.
2. The Secrets of D-Day and Le Jour du Miracle: these refer to the same D-Day historical work in different publishing markets.
3. Is Paris Burning?: French and English editions carry slightly different first-publication years because the French original preceded the English translation.
4. Is New York Burning?: the French edition appeared in 2004 and the English edition in 2005.

Larry Collins Fiction and Non-Fiction Separated

1. Historical non-fiction: Is Paris Burning?, O Jerusalem!, Freedom at Midnight, and The Secrets of D-Day.
2. Biography and social history: Or I’ll Dress You in Mourning.
3. Collaborative fiction: The Fifth Horseman and Is New York Burning?.
4. Solo fiction: Fall from Grace, Maze, Black Eagles, Tomorrow Belongs to Us, and The Road to Armageddon.

Why Collins’s Journalism Matters to the Novels

Collins worked as a foreign correspondent before becoming a full-time author. His assignments included Paris, Rome, Cairo, Beirut, and other major international centers during the Cold War.

That background explains why even his fictional thrillers often read like reconstructed geopolitical cases. Governments, intelligence agencies, banks, military commands, smugglers, diplomats, journalists, and political leaders tend to matter as much as individual heroes.

His partnership with Lapierre used the same reporting discipline. They interviewed large numbers of witnesses and used documents to reconstruct major historical events through individual experiences.

Larry Collins’s Final Book

Collins died on June 20, 2005, at age seventy-five.

His final published novel was Is New York Burning?, written with Dominique Lapierre. The French edition appeared before Collins’s death, while the English-language edition was released later in 2005.

At the time of his death, Collins had been working with Lapierre on another book concerning the Middle East, but it was not completed and published as another Collins volume.

Larry Collins Books in Order FAQs

What was Larry Collins’s first major book?

Is Paris Burning?, written with Dominique Lapierre and first published in French in 1964, was the partnership’s breakthrough book.

Did Larry Collins write a series?

Not a conventional long-running series. Tomorrow Belongs to Us and The Road to Armageddon are the closest recurring pair because both feature former CIA operative Jim Duffy.

What order should the Jim Duffy books be read?

Read Tomorrow Belongs to Us first and The Road to Armageddon second.

Are Fall from Grace and Fortitude two different books?

No. Fortitude is an alternate title associated with the same novel.

Is The Secrets of D-Day a novel?

No. It is non-fiction about the planning and execution of the Normandy invasion.

Did Larry Collins write O Jerusalem alone?

No. O Jerusalem! was written with Dominique Lapierre.

Are The Fifth Horseman and Is New York Burning connected?

No direct character continuity connects them. Both use the idea of nuclear terrorism in New York, but they are separate novels from different geopolitical periods.

What was Larry Collins’s final novel?

Is New York Burning?, written with Dominique Lapierre and published in French in 2004 and English in 2005, was his final novel.

The Best Way to Read Larry Collins

Readers interested in history can begin with Is Paris Burning?, move to O Jerusalem!, and then read Freedom at Midnight. These are separate historical subjects, so strict order is not required.

For thrillers, read The Fifth Horseman, Fall from Grace, Maze, and Black Eagles according to whichever subject interests you. Only the Jim Duffy books benefit from a clear two-book sequence.

Keep alternate titles and translated-edition dates in mind. Collins’s bibliography is compact, but French and English editions can make one work appear to be two different books if titles and first-publication dates are not reconciled.