Tess Gerritsen Books in Order (Rizzoli and Isles, Tavistock, Choose Me…)

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Bestselling author Tess Gerritsen is a retired general physician who started her writing career as a romantic thriller author in the 1980s. With Harvest in 1996, she started writing medical thrillers. And a few years later, she pivoted to the crime thriller genre with The Surgeon.

It was the beginning of the Rizzoli and Isles series that inspired the Rizzoli & Isles television series starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander. Today, Gerritsen keeps exploring different genres, writing standalone books as well as new R&I novels.

How to Read Tess Gerritsen’s Books in Order?

Reading The Rizzoli and Isles Series in Order

Mostly known today for its TV adaptation starring Angie Harmon as Jane Rizzoli and Sasha Alexander as Maura Isles, Rizzoli and Isles is a crime series about the investigations led by Boston Detective Jane Rizzoli and her friend and colleague Forensic Pathologist Maura Isles.

For more information about the Rizzoli & Isles series, go to the dedicated reading order.

1. The Surgeon (2001) – Introduction of Jane Rizzoli.
2. The Apprentice (2002) – Introduction of Dr. Maura Isles.
3. The Sinner (2003)
4. Body Double (2004)
5. Vanish (2005)
6. The Mephisto Club (2006)
7. The Keepsake (aka Keeping the Dead, 2008)
8. The Killing Place (aka Ice Cold, 2010)
   • Freaks (short story, 2011) – available in The Silent Girl.
9. The Silent Girl (2011)
   • John Doe (short story, 2012) – also available in Last To Die.
10. Last To Die (2012)
11. Die Again (2014)
12. I Know A Secret (2017)
13. Listen to Me (2022)

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Reading the Martini Club Series

1. The Spy Coast – Maggie Bird, a seemingly average retiree living in the seaside town of Purity, never talks about her past. But when an unidentified body is left on Maggie’s driveway, she knows it’s a calling card from old times. It’s been fifteen years since the failed mission that ended her career as a spy, and cost her far more than her job. Step forward the ‘Martini Club’ – Maggie’s silver-haired book group (to anyone who asks), and a cohort of former spies behind closed doors. With the help of her old friends – and always one step ahead of the persistent local cop – Maggie might still be able to save the life she’s built.
2. The Summer Guests (coming soon)

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Reading Tess Gerritsen’s Medical Thrillers

• Harvest (1996) – For Dr. Abby DiMatteo, the long road to Boston’s Bayside Hospital has been anything but easy. Now, immersed in the grinding fatigue of her second year as a surgical resident, she’s elated when the hospital’s elite cardiac transplant team taps her as a potential recruit. But Abby soon makes an anguished, crucial decision that jeopardizes her entire career. A car crash victim’s healthy heart is ready to be harvested; it is immediately cross-matched to a wealthy private patient, Nina Voss. Abby hatches a bold plan to make sure that the transplant goes instead to a dying seventeen-year-old boy who is also a perfect match.
• Life Support (1997) – The quiet overnight shift at Springer Hospital ER suits Dr. Toby Harper just fine-until she admits a man in critical condition from a possible viral infection of the brain. The delirious man barely responds to treatment-and then disappears without a trace. Before Toby can find him, a second case occurs, revealing a terrifying fact: the virus can only be spread through direct tissue exchange. Following a trail of death that winds from a pregnant sixteen-year-old prostitute to her own home, Toby discovers the unthinkable: the epidemic didn’t just happen-someone let it loose…
• Bloodstream (1998) – Lapped by the gentle waters of Locust Lake, the small resort town of Tranquility, Maine, seems like the perfect spot for Dr. Claire Elliot to shelter her adolescent son, Noah, from the distractions of the big city and the lingering memory of his father’s death. But with the first snap of winter comes shocking news that puts her practice on the line: a teenage boy under her care has committed an appalling act of violence. And as Claire and all of Tranquility soon discover, it is just the start of a chain of lethal outbursts among the town’s teenagers.

• Gravity (1999) – Dr Emma Watson, a brilliant research physician, has been training for the mission of a lifetime: to study living organisms in space. Jack McCallum, Emma’s estranged husband, has shared her dream of space travel, but a medical condition has grounded him. Now he must watch from the sidelines… The mission aboard the space station turns into a nightmare when a culture of single-celled organisms begins to regenerate out of control – and infects the crew with agonizing and deadly results. Emma struggles to contain the deadly virus, while back home Jack and NASA work against the clock to bring her home.
• The Bone Garden (2007, Feat. Maura Isles) – When a human skull is dug up in a garden near Boston, Dr Maura Isles is called in to investigate. She quickly discovers that the skeleton – that of a young woman – has been buried for over a hundred years. But who was the woman? And how did she die? It is the 1830s, and an impoverished medical student, Norris Marshall, is forced to procure corpses in order to further his studies in human anatomy. It’s a gruesome livelihood that will bring him into contact with a terrifying serial killer who slips from ballrooms to graveyards and into autopsy suites.

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Reading The Tavistock Series in Order

1. In Their Footsteps (1994) – The quiet scandal surrounding the death of her parents has always haunted Beryl Tavistock. Now she’s asking dangerous questions, and the answers are proving that the past does not die easily. Pulled into a world of espionage, Beryl quickly discovers that she needs help, and former CIA agent Richard Wolf is her only hope. But in a world where trust is a double-edged sword, friends become enemies and enemies are killers.
2. Stolen (Originally released as Thief of Hearts, 1995) – The sinking of a cargo ship and the slaughter of its crew seemed a senseless act of violence. But Clea Rice knows the truth and is determined to expose the culprits. When Jordan Tavistock is asked to steal the indiscreet letters of a friend, he reluctantly obliges, only to be caught red-handed by another burglar. The burglar is Clea, who is looking for something else entirely.

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Reading Tess Gerritsen’s Romantic thrillers

• Adventure’s Mistress (1985)
• Love’s Masquerade (1986)
• Call After Midnight (1987) – Newlywed Sarah Fontaine has just received the news that every wife fears: her husband of two months has died abroad in a hotel fire. Yet convinced he’s still alive, Sarah forges an alliance with Nick O’Hara from the U.S. State Department that has the two of them crisscrossing Europe on a desperate search for signs of life. As Sarah and Nick become quarry in the secret world of international espionage, they must risk everything for answers that may prove fatal.
• Under the Knife (1990) – For attorney David Ransom, it begins as an open-and-shut case: malpractice. Then Dr. Kate Chesne storms into his office, daring him to seek out the truth-that she’s being framed. When another patient turns up dead, David starts to believe her. Somewhere in the Honolulu hospital, a killer walks freely. And now David finds himself asking the same questions Kate is desperate to have answered.
• Never Say Die (1992) – Drawing near to the truth about her father’s fatal plane crash twenty years earlier, Willy Jane Maitland becomes involved with irreverent ex-army officer Guy Barnard, an expert on the Asian jungles where the crash took place. Reissue.

• Whistleblower (1992) – When Victor Holland came flying out of the night, he ran straight into the path of Catherine Weaver’s car. Having uncovered a terrifying secret that leads all the way to Washington, Victor is running for his life-and from the men who will go to any lengths to silence him. Though Victor’s story sounds like the ravings of a mad-man, the haunted look in his eyes-and the bullet hole in his shoulder-tell Cathy a different story. As each hour brings pursuers ever closer, she has to wonder, is she giving her trust to a man in danger or trusting her life to a dangerous man?
• Presumed Guilty (1993) – Miranda Wood thought she had seen the last of Richard Tremain, her rich and married ex-lover-until she discovered him stabbed to death in her bed. With her knife. With her world falling around her, Miranda is determined to clear her name and discover who killed Richard. But proving her innocence may become secondary to staying alive.…
• Girl Missing (Originally released as Peggy Sue Got Murdered) (1994) – The first body is a mystery. She’s young. She’s beautiful. And her corpse, laid out in the office of Boston medical examiner Kat Novak, betrays no secrets―except for a matchbook clutched in one stiff hand, seven numbers scrawled inside. The next body is a warning. When a second victim is discovered, Kat begins to fear that a serial killer is stalking the streets. The police are skeptical. The mayor won’t listen. And Kat’s chief suspect is one of the town’s most prominent citizens. The final body…might be hers.

• Keeper of the Bride (1996) – If Nina Cormier’s wedding had taken place, she would be dead. But after the bride was left at the altar, the church stood empty when the bomb exploded. It wasn’t until a stranger tried to run her off the road that Nina realized someone actually wanted to kill her. But who? That’s what Detective Sam Navarro has to find out…fast.
• Perfect Timing (2001)
• Murder and Mayhem (2006)
• Madame X (2008)
• Playing with Fire (2015) – The first time violinist Julia Ansdell picked up the “Incendio Waltz” in a darkened antique shop in Rome, she knew it was a strikingly unusual composition. The minor key and complex feverish arpeggios have a life of their own. But when she plays the piece, Julia blacks out and awakens to find her small daughter implicated in acts of surprising violence. When she travels to Venice to find the previous owner of the music, she uncovers a heart-stoppingly dark secret that not only dates back to the horrors of the Holocaust, but also directly involves a dangerously powerful family who would stop at nothing to keep Julia from bringing the truth to light.
• The Shape of Night (2019) – When Ava arrives at Brodie’s Watch, she thinks she has found the perfect place to hide from her past. Something terrible happened, something she is deeply ashamed of, and all she wants is to forget. But the old house on the hill both welcomes and repels her, and Ava quickly begins to suspect she is not alone. Either that or she is losing her mind. The house is full of secrets, but is the creeping sense of danger coming from within its walls, or from somewhere else entirely?
• Choose Me (with Gary Braver, 2021) – Taryn Moore is young, beautiful, and brilliant…so why would she kill herself? When Detective Frankie Loomis arrives on the scene to investigate the girl’s fatal plunge from her apartment balcony, she knows in her gut there’s more to the story. Her instincts are confirmed when surprise information is revealed that could have been reason enough for Taryn’s suicide―or a motive for her murder.

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If you like Tess Gerritsen, you may also want to see our Women’s Murder Club reading order, or our guide to the D.D. Warren series. Don’t hesitate to follow us on Twitter or Facebook to discover more book series.