James Lee Burke

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  • Bibliography:
    50 Books (4 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1965
  • Latest Book:
    June 2025
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Full Series List in Order

Billy Bob Holland

1 - Cimarron Rose (Aug-1997)
2 - Heartwood (Aug-1999)
3 - Bitterroot (Jun-2001)
4 - In the Moon of Red Ponies (Jun-2004)

Dave Robicheaux

1 - The Neon Rain (Mar-1987)
2 - Heaven's Prisoners (Apr-1988)
3 - Black Cherry Blues (Aug-1989)
4 - A Morning for Flamingos (Oct-1990)
5 - A Stained White Radiance (Apr-1992)
6 - In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead (Apr-1993)
7 - Dixie City Jam (Aug-1994)
8 - Burning Angel (Aug-1995)
9 - Cadillac Jukebox (Jul-1996)
10 - Sunset Limited (Jun-1998)
11 - Purple Cane Road (Aug-2000)
12 - Jolie Blon's Bounce (Jun-2002)
13 - Last Car to Elysian Fields (Sep-2003)
14 - Crusader's Cross (Jul-2005)
15 - Pegasus Descending (Jul-2006)
16 - The Tin Roof Blowdown (Jul-2007)
17 - Swan Peak (Jul-2008)
18 - The Glass Rainbow (Jul-2010)
19 - Creole Belle (Jul-2012)
20 - Light of the World (Jul-2013)
21 - Robicheaux (Jan-2018)
22 - The New Iberia Blues (Jan-2019)
23 - A Private Cathedral (May-2020)
24 - Clete (Jun-2024)

Hackberry Holland

1 - Lay Down My Sword and Shield (1971)
2 - Rain Gods (Jul-2009)
3 - Feast Day of Fools (Oct-2011)

A Holland Family Novel

1 - Wayfaring Stranger (Jul-2014)
2 - House of the Rising Sun (Dec-2015)
3 - The Jealous Kind (Sep-2016)
4 - Every Cloak Rolled in Blood (May-2022)

Book List in Order: 50 titles

  • Half of Paradise

    Meet Avery Broussard, the last in a line of once-substantial land owners whose weakness for alcohol lands him in prison; J. P. Winfield, a dirt-poor singer who makes it to the top of hillbilly music only to be destroyed by drug addiction; and Toussai...

  • To the Bright and Shining Sun

    This early novel from bestselling author James Lee Burke is a gritty coming-of-age story about a young Kentucky miner growing up in the Appalachian mountains who’s torn between his family life and the lure of the city.James Lee Burke, a writer who ...

  • Lay Down My Sword and Shield

    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy
    Hackberry Holland - 1

    From the best-selling author of Sunset Limited, now available in mass market: a classic tale of a man haunted by memories of the Korean War, the ancestors he was named after, and the man he used to be. Hack Holland's a hard drinker, a lawyer, and a ...

  • Two for Texas

    This James Lee Burke classic features Son Holland, the great-grandfather of beloved hero Billy Bob Holland, as he flees a Louisiana prison camp with a Native American woman and a fellow prisoner in tow.James Lee Burke steps back three generations to ...

  • The Convict and Other Stories

    THE COLLECTION NO CRIME FICTION FAN SHOULD BE WITHOUT -- THE ESSENTIAL SHORT STORIES OF JAMES LEE BURKE "America's best novelist" (The Denver Post ), two-time Edgar Award winner James Lee Burke is renowned for his lush, suspense-charged portrayals o...

  • The Lost Get-Back Boogie

    TROUBLE 1S RISING 1N MONTANA'S BITTERROOT VALLEY ... ... and Frank Riordan is the only one willing to stop it. As he wages a one-man campaign to shut down the local pulp mill that is polluting the air and devastating the environment, tensions are ...

  • The Neon Rain

    Dave Robicheaux - 1

    From the pulsing jazz of the French Quarter to the twisting trails of drug-dealers' swamps, New Orleans is Detective Dave Robicheaux's turf. But now he's fought too many battles: in Vietnam, with killers and hustlers, with the police brass, with the ...

  • Heaven's Prisoners

    Dave Robicheaux - 2

    Vietnam vet Dave Robicheaux has turned in his detective's badge, is winning his battle against booze, and has left New Orleans with his wife for the tranquil beauty of Louisiana's bayous. But a plane crash on the Gulf brings a young girl into his lif...

  • Black Cherry Blues

    Dave Robicheaux - 3

    Evil crept into Dave Robicheaux's bayou world one night and destroyed the woman he loved. Now it's threatening the life of his innocent child. Framed for murder, the Cajun ex-cop is traveling far from his Louisiana home to clear his name, to help a ...



  • A Morning for Flamingos

    Dave Robicheaux - 4

    Clutching the shards, of his shattered life, Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux has rejoined the New lberia police force. His partner is dead -- slain during a condemned prisoner's bloodyflight to freedom that left Robicheaux critically wounded...and...

  • Texas City, 1947

    One (S) of 26 lettered copies signed Burke out of 301 issued. A story of the childhood of boys raised by their father's uncaring mistress originally published in The Southwest Review magazine and in 1983 by Pocket Books as a paperback original....

  • A Stained White Radiance

    Dave Robicheaux - 5

    Cajun police detective Dave Robicheaux knows the Sonnier family of New Iberia--their connections to the CIA, the mob, and to a former Klansman now running for state office. And he knows their past, as dark and murky as a night on the Louisiana bayou....

  • In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead

    Dave Robicheaux - 6

    Hollywood has sent its emissaries to New Iberia Parish to film a Civil War epic in the steaming mists of the Louisiana bayou -- reawakening the ghosts of a past best left undisturbed. The restless specters wait in the shadows for cajun cop Dave Ro...

  • Dixie City Jam

    Dave Robicheaux - 7

    AS A CHILD HE WAS FRIGHTENED BY THE STORIES... It's out there, under the salt of the Gulf of Mexico, off the Louisiana coast--a buried Nazi submarine. Detective Dave Robicheaux of the New Iberia Sheriff's office has known of its existence since chil...

  • Burning Angel

    Dave Robicheaux - 8

    A gangster’s journal and a property dispute spell trouble for a Louisiana deputy in this hard-boiled murder mystery by a New York Times"bestselling author.The Fontenot family has lived as sharecroppers on Bertrand land for as long as anyone can r...

  • Cadillac Jukebox

    Dave Robicheaux - 9

    James Lee Burke has been hailed as a “national treasure” (Tampa Bay Times) and in his ninth Dave Robicheaux thriller, it’s easy to see why. This taut, twisted tale of corruption in the Louisiana bayou truly brands Burke as “America’s best n...

  • Cimarron Rose

    Billy Bob Holland - 1

    Texas attorney Billy Bob Holland has many secrets in his dark past. Among them is his illegitimate son, Lucas Smothers. When Lucas is arrested for murdering his girlfriend, Holland knows that he has no choice but to try to save the boy, regardless of...

  • Sunset Limited

    Dave Robicheaux - 10

    WITNESS AT THE CRUCIFIXION The townspeople of New Iberia, Louisiana, didn't crucify Megan Flynn's father. They just didn't catch whoever pinned him to a barn wall with sixteen-penny nails. Decades later, Megan, now a world-famous photojournalis...

  • Heartwood

    Billy Bob Holland - 2

    A brilliantly layered novel of crime, character, and place from the two-time Edgar Award winner, Gold Dagger Award winner, and New York Times bestselling author of Sunset Limited.Few writers in America today combine James Lee Burke's l...



  • Purple Cane Road

    Dave Robicheaux - 11

    Robicheaux first hears it from a pimp eager to trade information for his life: Mae Guillory was murdered outside a New Orleans nightclub by two cops. Dave Robicheaux was just a boy when his mother ran out on him and his whiskey-driven father. Now Rob...

  • Bitterroot

    Billy Bob Holland - 3

    Big Sky country. Billy Bob Holland has come to Montana's Bitterroot Valley to help an old friend in need. But against the rugged, wide-open vistas, it is Billy Bob who is targeted for big trouble. Wyatt Dixon, a prison parolee, believes the former Te...

  • Jolie Blon's Bounce

    Dave Robicheaux - 12

    New Iberia, Louisiana, is reeling from a one-two punch of brutal rape-homicides, and drug-addicted blues singer Tee Bobby Hulin has been tagged as the prime suspect. No stranger to bucking popular opinion, police detective Dave Robicheaux senses it's...

  • White Doves at Morning

    1861. Two young Southerners, friends despite their differing political views and backgrounds, enlist in the 18th Louisiana regiment of the Confederate Army: Robert Perry, wealthy and privileged, and irreverent Willie Burke, the son of Irish immigrant...

  • Last Car to Elysian Fields

    Dave Robicheaux - 13

    A rainy late-summer night finds Robicheaux in a New Orleans bar, about to confront the man who may have savagely assaulted his friend, Father Jimmy Dolan, a Catholic priest who's always at the centre of controversy. But things in a Burke novel are r...

  • In the Moon of Red Ponies

    Billy Bob Holland - 4

    Former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland is the target of a psychopathic killer who has been granted his freedom--in a shattering tale told in the "fierce and beautiful prose" (The Seattle Times) of James Lee Burke. Opening a Montana law practice is a n...

  • Crusader's Cross

    Dave Robicheaux - 14

    For detective Dave Robicheaux, memories including those of a strange and violent summer from his youth -- are best left alone. But a dying man's confession forces Robicheaux to resurrect a decades-old mystery with a missing woman at its heart. Her na...

  • Pegasus Descending

    Dave Robicheaux - 15

    When a nice young woman named Trish Klein blows into Louisiana passing hundred- dollar bills in local casinos, detective Dave Robicheaux senses a storm bearing down on his new life of contentment.... Twenty-five years ago, lost in a drunken haze in F...

  • Jesus Out to Sea

    One of the country’s most-acclaimed and popular novelists offers a selection of ten short stories centered around the devastation in Louisiana and Mississippi during and after Katrina.In this moving collection of short stories, James Lee Burke eleg...

  • The Tin Roof Blowdown

    Dave Robicheaux - 16

    Hurricane Katrina has reduced the Big Easy to the level of a medieval society. Now, with looters descending and violence erupting in the streets, Iberia Parish sheriff's detective Dave Robicheaux combs the apocalyptic landscape for a quartet of crimi...



  • Swan Peak

    Dave Robicheaux - 17

    Trouble follows Dave Robicheaux. James Lee Burke's new novel, Swan Peak, finds Detective Robicheaux far from his New Iberia roots, attempting to relax in the untouched wilderness of rural Montana. He, his wife, and his buddy Clete Purcell have ret...

  • Rain Gods

    Hackberry Holland - 2

    When Hackberry Holland became sheriff of a tiny Texas town near the Mexican border, he'd hoped to leave certain things behind: his checkered reputation, his haunted dreams, and his obsessive memories of the good life with his late wife, Rie. But the ...

  • Big Midnight Special

    in Best American Mystery Stories 2009

    Best-selling novelist Jeffery Deaver edits this latest collection of the genre's finest from the past year. Featuring "gritty tales told with panache," this is a "must-read for anybody who cares about crime stories" (Booklist)....

  • The Glass Rainbow

    Dave Robicheaux - 18

    The brutal murders of seven young women in a neighboring parish pull Robicheaux from his New Iberia home into a case with all the telltale signs of a serial killer. Except that one of the victims, a high school honors student, doesn't fit. Investigat...

  • Feast Day of Fools

    Hackberry Holland - 3

    Sheriff Hackberry Holland patrols a small Southwest Texas border town with a deep and abiding respect for the citizens in his care. Still mourning the loss of his cherished wife and locked in a perilous almost-romance with his deputy, Pam Tibbs, a wo...

  • Creole Belle

    Dave Robicheaux - 19

    Languishing in a recovery unit on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, Dave Robicheaux is fighting an enemy more insidious than the one who put a bullet in his back a month earlier in a shootout on Bayou Teche. The morphine meant to dull his pain is st...

  • Light of the World

    Dave Robicheaux - 20

    Louisiana Sherriff’s Detective Dave Robicheaux and his longtime friend and partner Clete Purcel are vacationing in Montana’s spectacular Big Sky country when a series of suspicious events leads them to believe their lives -- and the lives of thei...

  • A Dust Bowl Tale of Bonnie and Clyde

    From James Lee Burke, called America's best novelist by The Denver Post , comes a brand new e-short about a young man's encounter with the infamous Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrowa story that becomes the first chapter in Burke's upcoming novel Way...

  • Wayfaring Stranger

    A Holland Family Novel - 1

    In his most ambitious work yet, New York Times bestseller James Lee Burke tells a classic American story through one man's unforgettable life -- connecting a fateful encounter with Bonnie and Clyde to heroic acts at the Battle of the Bulge and finall...

  • House of the Rising Sun

    A Holland Family Novel - 2

    New York Times bestseller James Lee Burke returns with his latest masterpiece, the story of a father and son separated by war and circumstance -- and whose encounter with the legendary Holy Grail will change their lives forever. From its opening s...



  • The Jealous Kind

    A Holland Family Novel - 3

    From New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke -- an atmospheric, coming-of-age story set in 1952 Texas, as the Korea War rages. On its surface, life in Houston is as you would expect: drive-in restaurants, souped-up cars, jukeboxes, teena...

  • Robicheaux

    Dave Robicheaux - 21

    James Lee Burke’s most beloved character, Dave Robicheaux, returns in this gritty, atmospheric mystery set in the towns and backwoods of Louisiana. DAVE ROBICHEAUX IS A HAUNTED MAN. Between his recurrent nightmares about Vietnam, his battle w...

  • The New Iberia Blues

    Dave Robicheaux - 22

    The shocking death of a young woman leads Detective Dave Robicheaux into the dark corners of Hollywood, the mafia, and the backwoods of Louisiana in this gripping mystery from “modern master” (Publishers Weekly) James Lee Burke. Detective Dav...

  • A Private Cathedral

    Dave Robicheaux - 23

    After finding himself caught up in one of Louisiana’s oldest and bloodiest family rivalries, Detective Dave Robicheaux must battle the most terrifying adversary he has ever encountered: a time-traveling superhuman assassin. The Shondell and Bala...

  • Another Kind of Eden

    New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke brings readers a captivating tale of justice, love, brutality, and mysticism set in the turbulent 1960s. The American West in the early 1960s appears to be a pastoral paradise: golden wheat fields,...

  • Every Cloak Rolled in Blood

    A Holland Family Novel - 4

    In his most autobiographical novel to date, James Lee Burke continues the epic Holland family saga with a writer grieving the death of his daughter while battling earthly and supernatural outlaws. Novelist Aaron Holland Broussard is shattered when...

  • Flags on the Bayou

    EDGAR AWARD WINNER FOR BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR From New York Times-bestselling author James Lee Burke comes a novel set in Civil War-era Louisiana as the South transforms and a brilliant cast of characters – enslaved and free women, plantation g...

  • Harbor Lights: Anthology

    A dynamic, gripping collection of short stories from “America’s best novelist” (Denver Post), the New York Times bestselling James Lee Burke Harbor Lights is a story collection from one of the most popular and widely acclaimed icons of Ameri...

  • Harbor Lights

    New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke’s Harbor Lights is a story collection from one of the most popular and widely acclaimed icons of American fiction, featuring a never-before-published novella. These eight stories move from the m...

  • Clete

    Dave Robicheaux - 24

    In the latest installment in his famous Detective Dave Robicheaux series, New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke brings Dave’s partner and friend Clete Purcel to the forefront for the first time as Clete and Dave attempt to stop ruthless...



  • Don't Forget Me, Little Bessie

    Bestselling author James Lee Burke tells his most thrilling and insightful story yet through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Bessie HollandAt the beginning of the twentieth century, as America grapples with forces of human and natural violence more pow...

Award-Winning Books by James Lee Burke

Black Cherry Blues
1990 Edgar Allan Poe Award -- Novel
Cimarron Rose
1998 Edgar Allan Poe Award -- Novel
Dixie City Jam
1995 Hammett -- Best Novel
Jolie Blon's Bounce
2003 Audies -- Mystery-Fiction
Light of the World
2014 Spur Award -- Contemporary


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

James Lee Burke has published 50 books.

The next book by James Lee Burke, Don't Forget Me, Little Bessie, will be published in June 2025.

The first book by James Lee Burke, Half of Paradise, was published in January 1965.

Yes. James Lee Burke has 4 series.
Author Series
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