John Grisham Novel List Novels & Stories

I have a spreadsheet. It's color-coded. Green for the ones I've read, yellow for the ones I own but haven't read, red for the ones I didn't enjoy (a very short column). Seeing the list in Excel, sorted by year, is deeply satisfying. It turns a casual reading habit into a manageable project. I highly recommend it.

Don't sleep on his later work when you look at the list. 'Camino Island' and 'Camino Winds' are fun departures into the book world and light crime. Seeing them on the timeline shows he's not just repeating himself. The order reveals his attempts to stretch the genre, even if not every experiment is a home run.

Alright, let's lay this out. I keep a spreadsheet because I'm a nerd and tried to read them all in order once. This is his adult legal thrillers only, no kids' books, no short story collections like 'Ford County'. Starting with 'A Time to Kill' in 1989 – technically written earlier but that's the debut. Then 'The Firm' in '91, 'The Pelican Brief' in '92, 'The Client' in '93. 'The Chamber' in '94, 'The Rainmaker' in '95, 'The Runaway Jury' in '96. 'The Partner' in '97, 'The Street Lawyer' in '98, 'The Testament' in '99.

2000s: 'The Brethren' (2000), 'A Painted House' (2001 – that's his non-legal one, sort of a departure), 'Skipping Christmas' (2001, the Christmas comedy), 'The Summons' (2002), 'The King of Torts' (2003), 'The Last Juror' (2004), 'The Broker' (2005), 'Playing for Pizza' (2007 – football in Italy, not a thriller), 'The Appeal' (2008), 'The Associate' (2009).

2010s onward: 'The Confession' (2010), 'The Litigators' (2011), 'Calico Joe' (2012, baseball), 'The Racketeer' (2012), 'Sycamore Row' (2013, a sequel to 'A Time to Kill'), 'Gray Mountain' (2014), 'Rogue Lawyer' (2015), 'The Whistler' (2016), 'Camino Island' (2017, book theft), 'The Rooster Bar' (2017), 'The Reckoning' (2018, historical), 'The Guardians' (2019), 'Camino Winds' (2020), 'A Time for Mercy' (2020, another sequel), 'The Judge's List' (2021), 'The Boys from Biloxi' (2022), 'The Exchange' (2023, sequel to 'The Firm'). I might have missed one of the recent ones, but I think that's the core. He's prolific.