Cover image of "The Midnight House" by Alex Berenson, one of the novels in the John Wells spy series

Alex Berenson’s first John Wells novel, The Faithful Spy, won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel and was a #1 New York Times bestseller. For more than a decade, he was a reporter for the Times, but Berrenson has been writing the John Wells spy series full-time since 2010. His work reflects the superior research skills he learned in his many years as a journalist.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

The 12 John Wells novels Berenson published from 2006 to 2018 cover the gamut of America’s 21st-century foreign policy preoccupations: Al Qaeda, North Korea, nuclear terrorism, CIA black sites, Saudi jihadis, the war in Afghanistan, terrorists in Somalia, conflict with Iran, ISIS, the complex US relationship with Israel, and the new Cold War with Russia. The John Wells books are listed below in chronological order of their publication. Each title is followed by a link to its review.

The John Wells spy series in order

The Faithful Spy (2006) – Al Qaeda from the inside out: a thriller filled with suspense

The Ghost War (2008) – North Korea, Afghanistan, China, Iran, all in one superb spy novel

The Silent Man (2009) – An able spy story about terrorism, nuclear weapons, and Russia

The Midnight House (2010) – The Pentagon and the CIA take a lot of punishment for rendition

The Secret Soldier (2011) – Jihadis, the Saudi royal family, and an American soldier-spy

The Shadow Patrol (2012) – A suspense-filled thriller about the war in Afghanistan

The Night Ranger (2013) – An outstanding thriller set amid the refugee crisis in Kenya and Somalia

The Counterfeit Agent (2014) – Alex Berenson’s John Wells takes on a rogue ex-CIA agent

Twelve Days (2015) – In a nail-biting thriller, John Wells must stop a US war with Iran

The Wolves (2016) – Spies, a billionaire, and a supermodel in Hong Kong and Macao

The Prisoner (2017) – Going undercover for the CIA in ISIS

The Deceivers (2018) – Russia takes the next step in the latest John Wells spy novel

For novels in the same genre as the John Wells spy series, see The 15 top espionage novels and Olen Steinhauer’s brilliant Yalta Boulevard cycle set in Eastern Europe. You might also be interested in 18 eye-opening books about terrorism.

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