
Order of the Sanguines
supernatural thriller
Series · horror
The Arkham Horror: The Dark Waters Trilogy series by Graham McNeill has 3 books and is best read in publication order, starting with Ghouls of the Miskatonic (2011).
Start here: Ghouls of the Miskatonic (2011) — then read straight through in publication order.
The order the books were released — the default way to read the series.
A Lovecraftian tie-in trilogy set in Fantasy Flight Games' Arkham Horror universe, following Miskatonic University professor Oliver Grayson as he uncovers a cult conspiracy tied to the awakening of Cthulhu itself. Ghouls of the Miskatonic opens the investigation in Arkham, Massachusetts; Bones of the Yopasi pushes the search into Central American ruins as the scope of the threat widens; Dweller in the Deep brings Grayson and his allies to the story's climax, deliberately synchronized by McNeill to unfold as a different perspective on the same events as H. P. Lovecraft's original short story "The Call of Cthulhu."
It's cosmic horror played fairly straight -- creeping dread, forbidden knowledge, and a protagonist whose expertise (ancient languages, esoteric scholarship) is as much a liability as an asset -- rather than the pulpy action of McNeill's Warhammer work, and it's a rare example of him writing in someone else's established mythos rather than Games Workshop's.
Three: Ghouls of the Miskatonic (2011), Bones of the Yopasi (2012), and Dweller in the Deep (2014).
Publication order, which is the only order -- it's one continuous investigation following the same protagonist, Professor Oliver Grayson, throughout.
No -- it's set in Fantasy Flight Games' Arkham Horror universe (itself derived from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos), entirely separate from McNeill's Black Library work.
No prior knowledge of the game is required -- the trilogy stands on its own as Lovecraftian horror fiction.
Reading order last verified .