
Stephanie Plum
mystery
Series · mystery
The In Death series by J. D. Robb has 75 books and is best read in publication order, starting with Rapture in Death (1995). The next book, Fury in Death, is due 8 September 2026.
Start here: Rapture in Death (1995) — then read straight through in publication order.
The order the books were released — the default way to read the series.
The order the story's events happen in, novellas slotted where they belong.
In Death is set in a near-future New York (the books open in 2058 and the timeline creeps forward roughly one year per book) and follows NYPSD homicide lieutenant Eve Dallas, a driven, damaged cop who was found as a starved, abused child with no memory of her life before age eight. Eve solves crimes with obsessive, procedural precision, and each entry is a genuine whodunit built around a specific murder or string of murders — corporate conspiracies, serial killers, celebrity scandals, cult violence — rendered with real forensic and interrogation detail. Wrapped around the case-of-the-book is a long-running serial: Eve's marriage to Irish crime-lord-turned-legitimate-billionaire Roarke, her fraught recovery from childhood trauma, and a deep, recurring ensemble of partners, friends and NYPSD colleagues (Delia Peabody, Ian McNab, Charles Monroe) who age and evolve across the sixty-plus books.
The appeal is the reliable, comfort-read blend of tight police procedural plotting with Nora Roberts's romance-honed relationship writing and a light SF veneer (auto-chefs, glide-cars, data-and-link tech) that never overwhelms the mystery. Readers who want a series they can binge for years without it going stale — two books a year, February and September, since the mid-1990s — and who like their crime fiction with a strong central marriage at its core, are the target audience. It is one of the longest-running continuously published crime series by a single writer in the genre.
There are 63 numbered entries as of Fury in Death (September 2026), plus several novella-only .5 entries and the Three in Death collection, all written by Nora Roberts as J. D. Robb.
Publication order, starting with Naked in Death. The series is tightly serialized around Eve Dallas's marriage and recovered memories, so reading in order matters more than in most crime series.
No, it's ongoing. Robb has published two books a year (February and September) for three decades; the next is Fury in Death, due September 8, 2026, with Perfect in Death announced for February 2027.
No. The half-numbered entries (Midnight in Death, Interlude in Death, Haunted in Death, etc.) were originally anthology novellas and are side stories — enjoyable but skippable without losing the main plot threads.
You can, since each book's central murder case is self-contained, but the Eve/Roarke relationship and Eve's backstory unfold gradually across the whole series, so starting with Naked in Death gives the fullest experience.
Reading order last verified .