Kathy Reichs Temperance Brennan Series Books In Order

See More From Book Club Friends

Sign up and log in to post, comment and join the conversation.

Book Club Friends is 100% Canadian 🇨🇦

Temperance Brennan Books In Order

Kathy Reich’s popular Temperance Brennan series follows the adventures of Temperance “Tempe” Brennan, a forensic anthropologist solving mysterious crimes. Readers grow to love the character for her professional acumen, sense of humour, and bravery.

Kathy Reichs is a forensic anthropologist herself, and her extensive professional experience in the scientific field provides the books with an unmatched veracity. Just like her fictional heroine, Kathy has worked both in North Carolina and Quebec.

The books are not overtly violent, but they do go into detail when Tempe is examining the evidence. Kathy injects a lot of suspense and fun into Temp’s investigations and keeps the stories fresh by exploring more about Tempe’s background, her family, and developing her relationships over the course of the series.

The Temperance Brennan series is best enjoyed in order as the characters evolve throughout the series, but it is not absolutely crucial to do so. Kathy has also written several short stories featuring Tempe that are included in The Bone Collection. The sequence of these novellas within the series is: First Bones, which is a prequel (0.5), Bones in Her Pocket (15.5), Swamp Bones (16.5), and Bones on Ice (17.5). Tempe also makes cameos in the young-adult Virals series in Swift and Swipe.

1. Deja Dead

Her life is devoted to justice—even for those she never knew. Deja Dead is the first Temperance Brennan novel in the “cleverly plotted and expertly maintained series”

2. Death Du Jour

When a recent skeleton among ancient bones raises questions—and danger—forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is the only one who can solve the case

3. Deadly Decisions

Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist for Quebec, is abruptly recalled from a course she is teaching at Quantico for a gruesome duty.

4. Fatal Voyage

Kathy Reichs takes forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan behind the scenes of a major commercial airliner crash in this pulse-pounding thriller.

5. Grave Secrets

Four girls are missing from Guatemala City, including the daughter of a high-ranking government official. When a skeleton is found, only someone with Temperance Brennan’s expertise can deduce who the victim was and how they died.

6. Bare Bones

“Down time” is not a phrase in Tempe Brennan’s vocabulary. A string of disturbing cases has put her vacation plans on hold; instead, she heads to the lab to analyze charred remains from a suspicious fire

7. Monday Mourning

Forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan finds the skeletons of three young women in the basement of a pizza parlour. Homicide detective Luc Claudel believes the bones are historic. But Tempe has her doubts

8. Cross Bones

Temperance Brennan is called in to interpret the wounds of a man who was shot in the head, but while she tries to make sense of the fracture patterning, an unknown man slips her a photograph of a skeleton, telling her it holds the answer to the victim’s death.

9. Break No Bones

It’s the second-to-last day of archaeological field school – the students are working on a site of prehistoric graves on Dewees, a barrier island north of Charleston, South Carolina, when a much more recent burial is uncovered.

10. Bones to Ashes

Detective Andrew Ryan is working a series of cases and requires Dr Temperance Brennan’s forensic expertise. Three missing persons, three unidentified bodies – all female, all in their early-to-mid teens. Could there be a serial killer at work?

11. Devil Bones

An underground chamber is exposed in a seedy, dilapidated house with sagging trim and peeling paint … In the dark cellar, a ritualistic display is revealed.

12. 206 Bones

A routine case turns sinister when Dr Temperance Brennan is accused of mishandling the autopsy of a missing heiress. Someone has made an incriminating accusation that she missed or concealed crucial evidence.

13. Spider Bones

John Lowery was declared dead in 1968—the victim of a Huey crash in Vietnam, his body buried long ago in North Carolina. Four decades later, Temperance Brennan is called to the scene of a drowning in Hemmingford, Quebec.

14. Flash and Bones

Just as 200,000 fans are pouring into town for Race Week, a body is found in a barrel of asphalt next to the Charlotte Motor Speedway. The next day, a NASCAR crew member comes to Temperance Brennan’s office

15. Bones Are Forever

Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan examines the bodies of three babies while Detective Ryan investigates their mother in a case with ties to the high-stakes world of diamond mining.

16. Bones of the Lost

Kathy Reichs returns with her sixteenth riveting novel featuring forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan, whose examination of a young girl killed in a hit and run in North Carolina triggers an investigation into international human trafficking.

17. Bones Never Lie

Temperance “Tempe” Brennan faces down the demons of her past in the seventeenth thriller in Kathy Reichs’s phenomenally successful Bones series.

18. Speaking in Bones

Temperance Brennan investigates what looks to be a typical missing person case, only to find herself digging up bones possibly left by a serial killer, a cult, or perhaps something not entirely of this world.

19. A Conspiracy of Bones

Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan must use all her skills to discover the identity of a faceless corpse and its connection to a decade-old missing child case.

20. The Bone Code

On the way to hurricane-ravaged Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, Tempe receives a call from the Charleston coroner.

21. Cold, Cold Bones

Temperance Brennan uncovers a series of gruesome killings eerily reenacting the most shocking of her prior cases.

22. The Bone Hacker

Called in to examine what is left of a person thought to have been struck by lightning, Tempe traces an unusual tattoo to its source and is soon embroiled in a much larger case.

23. Fire and Bones

Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan finds herself at the center of a Washington, DC, arson investigation that spawns deepening levels of mystery and, ultimately, violence.

24. Evil Bones

Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan finds herself enmeshed in a series of grisly animal killings that turn into something far more sinister.