Linwood Barclay

Author Information
Linwood Barclay's Latest Book

Newest Release

  • Bibliography:
    30 Books (3 Series)
  • First Book:
    June 2004
  • Latest Book:
    June 2025
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About the Author

Linwood Barclay was born in the United States, but just as he was turning four, his parents moved to Canada, settling in a cottage resort and trailer park in the Kawartha Lakes region of Ontario. But when Linwood was 16, his father died, and he essentially took over running the family business. In 1981, he joined the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest circulation newspaper. For twelve years he held a variety of editing positions, then became the paper’s humor columnist in 1993. A few thousand columns later, he retired from the paper in 2008 to write books full-time.

After writing four comic thrillers featuring the character Zack Walker, Linwood turned to darker, standalone novels, starting with No Time for Goodbye, which became an international hit and has been optioned for film by Eric McCormack. Since then, all of Linwood’s novels have appeared on bestseller lists.

Linwood studied English Literature at Trent University. It was at Trent where he met his wife Neetha. They have been married more than thirty years, and have two children.

Full Series List in Order

No Time for Goodbye

1 - No Time for Goodbye (Oct-2007)
2 - No Safe House (Aug-2014)

Promise Falls

1 - Too Close to Home (Oct-2008)
2 - Never Look Away (Mar-2010)
3 - Broken Promise (Aug-2015)
3.5 - Final Assignment (Jan-2016)
4 - Far from True (Mar-2016)
5 - The Twenty-Three (Nov-2016)
6 - Parting Shot (Nov-2017)
A Tap on the Window (Aug-2013)

Zack Walker

1 - Bad Move (Jun-2004)
2 - Bad Guys (Jun-2005)
3 - Lone Wolf // Bad Luck (Oct-2006)
4 - Stone Rain // Bad News (May-2007)

Book List in Order: 30 titles

  • Bad Move

    Zack Walker - 1

    LIFE IN THE SUBURBS CAN BE MURDER... As a father of two overly curious, streetwise teenagers and husband to a wisecracking news-junkie journalist, work-at-home science fiction writer Zack Walker has a hard time convincing his loved ones to obey hi...

  • Bad Guys

    Zack Walker - 2

    In Linwood Barclay's debut, paranoid Zack Walker transplanted his city-savvy wife and teenagers to the peaceful burbs--where nervous fathers rest easy. Well, not quite. Now, another suspense-filled adventure, the Walkers have moved back e and Zack ca...

  • Lone Wolf // Bad Luck

    Zack Walker - 3

    Newspaper writer, family man, and reluctant hero Zack Walker has stumbled onto some dicey stories before, but nothing like what he's about to uncover when a mutilated corpse is found at his father's lakeside fishing camp. As always, Zack fears the wo...

  • Stone Rain // Bad News

    Zack Walker - 4

    Metropolitan newspaper writer Zack Walker has a knack for stumbling onto deadly stories. But it's one that his good friend Trixie Snelling doesn't want told that's about to unleash a storm of trouble. As a professional dominatrix in the suburbs, Trix...

  • No Time for Goodbye

    No Time for Goodbye - 1

    Fourteen-year-old Cynthia Bigge woke one morning to discover that her entire family -- mother, father, older brother -- had vanished. No note, no trace, no return. Ever. Now, twenty-five years later, she'll learn the devastating truth. Sometimes it'...

  • Too Close to Home

    Promise Falls - 1

    Critically acclaimed and bestselling author Linwood Barclay brings terror closer than ever before in a stunning thriller in which murder strikes in the place we should feel safest of all…. In a quiet neighborhood, in the house next door, a family ...

  • Fear the Worst

    Tim Blake is an average guy. He sells cars. He has an ex-wife who's moved in with another man. It's not a life without hassles, but nothing will prepare him for what happens when his daughter Sydney, vanishes into thin air. At the hotel where she su...

  • Never Look Away

    Promise Falls - 2

    A warm summer Saturday. An amusement park. David Harwood is glad to be spending some quality time with his wife, Jan, and their four-year-old son. But what begins as a pleasant family outing turns into a nightmare after an inexplicable disappearance....

  • Clouded Vision

    Keisha Ceylon is a psychic. At least, that's what she passes herself off as. The truth is, Keisha's real powers have more to do with separating troubled families from their money than actually seeing into the netherworld. Keisha watches the news for ...



  • The Accident

    Glen Garber, a contractor, has seen his business shaken by the housing crisis, and now his wife, Sheila, is taking a business course at night to increase her chances of landing a good-paying job. But she should have been home by now. With their eight...

  • Never Saw It Coming

    Keisha Ceylon is a psychic. At least, that's what she tells people. She watches the news for stories of missing people, then waits a few days and goes to see the family. She tells them she's had a vision and that she may know where their missing love...

  • Trust Your Eyes

    Thomas Kilbride is a map-obsessed schizophrenic so affected that he rarely leaves the self-imposed bastion of his bedroom. But with a computer program called Whirl360.com, he travels the world while never so much as stepping out the door. He pores ov...

  • A Tap on the Window

    Promise Falls

    Linwood Barclay now reveals the dark side of a small town -- and the even darker secrets that hide there... It’s been two months since private investigator Cal Weaver’s teenage son Scott died in a tragic accident. Ever since, he and his wife ...

  • No Safe House

    No Time for Goodbye - 2

    The New York Times bestselling author delivers the follow-up to No Time for Goodbye--an electrifying novel of suspense in which a family’s troubled past is about to return in more ways than one. And this time, they may not be able to escape.... ...

  • Broken Promise

    Promise Falls - 3

    From New York Times bestselling author Linwood Barclay comes an explosive novel set in the peaceful small town of Promise Falls, where secrets can always be buried -- but never forgotten… After his wife’s death and the collapse of his newspape...

  • Final Assignment

    Promise Falls - 3.5

    Stephen King has called him “a suspense master.” Now the New York Times and #1 international bestselling author of Broken Promise delivers a taut thriller about a crime that will give the town of Promise Falls a punch to the gut...   Private...

  • Far from True

    Promise Falls - 4

    New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Linwood Barclay delivers the second spine-chilling thriller set in the troubled town of Promise Falls, following the electrifying cliffhanger ending of Broken Promise... After the screen of a...

  • Jacket Man

    From the New York Times and #1 international bestselling author of Far From True, a short story where the grifter is not who he seems.Sam seems like an ordinary guy. While he is filling up his car with gas in Stamford, Connecticut, a car whips into t...

  • The Twenty-Three

    Promise Falls - 5

    From New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Linwood Barclay comes the jaw-dropping finale of the Promise Falls Trilogy. It’s May 23, and small town Promise Falls finds itself in the midst of a full-blown catastrophe with dozens ...



  • Chase

    Get ready to run . . . an edge-of-your-seat thriller with bite from international bestselling author Linwood Barclay, in his first novel for 9-12 year olds.Chipper is a very special dog. As part of a top-secret, multi-million dollar experiment to cr...

  • Parting Shot

    Promise Falls - 6

    From New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Linwood Barclay comes a new, standalone blockbuster thriller that spins off from the events of the explosive Promise Falls trilogy.If you made a mistake that took someone's life, y...

  • Escape

    Don't stop running . . . the second edge-of-your-seat thriller with bite from international bestselling author Linwood Barclay for ages 9+12-year-old Jeff and genetically engineered spy dog Chipper are on the run from the mysterious and sinister gove...

  • A Noise Downstairs

    The New York Times bestselling author of No Time for Goodbye returns with a haunting psychological thriller that blends the twists and turns of Gillian Flynn with the driving suspense of Harlan Coben, in which a man is troubled by odd sounds for whic...

  • Elevator Pitch

    The New York Times bestselling author of A Noise Downstairs and No Time for Goodbye returns with an edge-of-your-seat thriller that does for elevators what Psycho did for showers and Jaws did for the beach -- a heart-pounding tale in which a series o...

  • Find You First

    The New York Times bestselling author of Elevator Pitch and master of psychological suspense returns with a riveting thriller in which the possible heirs of a dying tech millionaire are mysteriously being eliminated, one by one. Tech millionaire M...

  • Take Your Breath Away

    From the New York Times bestselling author of Find You First and Elevator Pitch comes a gripping psychological thriller about a formerly missing woman who has suddenly returned under mysterious circumstances. ?One weekend, while Andrew Mason was o...

  • Look Both Ways

    Inspired by his decades-long love of cars, internationally bestselling author Linwood Barclay envisions a world in which automotive technology outpaces our wildest dreams -- and our darkest nightmares -- in a gripping new novel of action and suspense...

  • The Lie Maker

    In this twisty, fast-paced thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Find You First and Take Your Breath Away, a man desperately tries to track down his father -- who was taken into witness protection years ago -...

  • I Will Ruin You

    "Linwood Barclay's I Will Ruin You is a page-turner that also has important things to say. You'll get your money's worth out of this one." "Stephen KingIn the latest novel from New York Times bestselling author Linwood Barclay, a teacher’s act of...



  • Whistle

    “Terrific.” --  Stephen King on WhistleNew York Times bestselling author Linwood Barclay enters new territory with a supernatural chiller in which a woman and her young son move to a small town looking for a fresh start, only to be...

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Linwood Barclay has published 30 books.

The next book by Linwood Barclay, Whistle, will be published in June 2025.

The first book by Linwood Barclay, Bad Move, was published in June 2004.

Yes. Linwood Barclay has 3 series.
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