Stephanie Plum is a bounty hunter with attitude. In Stephanie’s opinion, toxic waste, rabid drivers, armed schizophrenics, and August heat, humidity, and hydrocarbons are all part of the great adventure of living in Jersey. She’s a product of blue-collar Trenton, where “houses and minds are proud to be narrow”, cars are American, windows are clean, and dinner is served at six.
Out of work and out of money, with her Miata repossessed and her refrigerator empty, Stephanie blackmails her bail bondsman cousin, Vinnie, into giving her a try as an apprehension agent. And that’s only the beginning of a series that will set her on the trail of fugitives. Stephanie will have to sharpen her sleuthing skills, because she’s got many a mystery to solve.
Just to complicate things, poor Stephanie has a bad case of the hots for handsome vice cop Joe Morelli, also from the “burg.” As Stephanie puts it, “There are some men who enter a woman’s life and screw it up forever. Joseph Morelli did this to me — not forever, but periodically.”And somehow, Morelli always seems to be involved in Stephanie’s cases. He may be all wrong for her, but what’s a girl to do?
Aiding and abetting Stephanie in her quest to track down and bring back those who have jumped the bond so generously put up by her cousin Vinnie is Ranger, the know-it-all, done-it-all hardcore, hardcase Cuban-American bounty hunter, dangerous dude and love interest #2.
Each book in this series is a whole story with a beginning and an ending, however there may be minor references to events that occurred earlier in the series. Therefore, with respect to the mystery alone, the books can be read out of order, if desired. However, like any long series that focuses on a core group of characters, there are various relationship changes that develop more naturally when the full length novels are read in the order in which they were published.
- Stephanie Plum series in order by Janet Evanovich
- One for the Money
- Two for the Dough
- Three to Get Deadly
- Four to Score
- High Five
- Hot Six
- Seven Up
- Hard Eight
- Visions of Sugar Plums (between-the-numbers holiday novella)
- To the Nines
- Ten Big Ones
- Eleven on Top
- Twelve Sharp
- Plum Lovin’ (between-the-numbers holiday novella)
- Lean Mean Thirteen
- Plum Lucky (between-the-numbers holiday novella)
- Fearless Fourteen
- Plum Spooky (between-the-numbers novel)
- Finger Lickin’ Fifteen
- Sizzling Sixteen
- Smokin’ Seventeen
- Explosive Eighteen
- Notorious Nineteen
- Takedown Twenty
- Top Secret Twenty-One
- Tricky Twenty-Two
- Turbo Twenty-Three
- Hardcore Twenty-Four (November 14, 2017)