John D. MacDonald Books In Order

Travis McGee Books In Publication Order

The Deep Blue Good-By (1964)
Nightmare in Pink (1964)
A Purple Place for Dying (1964)
The Quick Red Fox (1964)
A Deadly Shade of Gold (1965)
Bright Orange for the Shroud (1965)
Darker Than Amber (1966)
One Fearful Yellow Eye (1966)
Pale Gray for Guilt (1968)
The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper (1968)
Dress Her in Indigo (1969)
The Long Lavender Look (1970)
A Tan and Sandy Silence (1971)
The Scarlet Ruse (1972)
The Turquoise Lament (1973)
The Dreadful Lemon Sky (1974)
The Empty Copper Sea (1978)
The Green Ripper (1979)
Free Fall in Crimson (1981)
Cinnamon Skin (1982)
The Lonely Silver Rain (1984)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

The Brass Cupcake (1950)
Judge Me Not (1951)
Weep For Me (1951)
Wine of the Dreamers (1951)
Murder for the Bride (1951)
The Damned (1952)
Ballroom of the Skies (1952)
Planet of the Dreamers (1953)
Cancel All Our Vows (1953)
Neon Jungle (1953)
Dead Low Tide (1953)
Area of Suspicion (1954)
All These Condemned (1954)
Contrary Pleasure (1954)
A Bullet for Cinderella (1955)
On the Make (1955)
Cry Hard, Cry Fast (1955)
Border Town Girl (1956)
Murder in the Wind (1956)
April Evil (1956)
A Man of Affairs (1957)
Death Trap (1957)
The Empty Trap (1957)
The Deceivers (1958)
Clemmie (1958)
Soft Touch (1958)
Cape Fear (1958)
Executioners (1958)
The Beach Girls (1959)
You Live Once (1959)
The Crossroads (1959)
Please Write for Details (1959)
The End of the Night (1960)
The Only Girl in the Game (1960)
Slam the Big Door (1960)
Where is Janice Gantry? (1961)
One Monday We Killed Them All (1961)
A Key to the Suite (1962)
On the Run (1962)
A Flash of Green (1962)
The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything (1962)
I Could Go on Singing (1963)
The Drowner (1963)
Deadly Welcome (1965)
The Last One Left (1967)
No Deadly Drug (1968)
The Price of Murder (1972)
Condominium (1977)
Two (1983)
One More Sunday (1984)
Barrier Island (1986)
Hurricane (2014)
Murder Run-Around (2015)
In a Small Motel (2017)
What Christmas Did for Jerusha Grumble (2019)

Short Story Collections In Publication Order

The Good Old Stuff (1961)
End of the Tiger and Other Stories (1966)
Seven (1971)
Other Times, Other Worlds (1978)
More Good Old Stuff (1984)
Death Quotient and Other Stories (2010)

Travis McGee Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Short Story Collections Book Covers

John D. MacDonald Books Overview

The Deep Blue Good-By

TRAVIS McGEEHe’s a self described beach bum who won his houseboat in a card game. He’s also a knight errant who’s wary of credit cards, retirement benefits, political parties, mortgages, and television. He only works when his cash runs out and his rule is simple: he’ll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half…
. With an introduction by CARL HIAASENJOHN D. MACDONALD’…
. the great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.’ STEPHEN KING’…
.a master storyteller, a masterful suspense writer.’ MARY HIGGINS CLARK’…
.a dominant influence on writers crafting the continuing series character.’ SUE GRAFTON’…
. my favorite novelist of all time.’ DEAN KOONTZ’…
the consummate pro, a master storyteller and witty observer.’ JONATHAN KELLERMAN’…
remains one of my idols.’ DONALD WESTLAKETHE TRAVIS McGEE SERIES’…
one of the great sagas in American fiction.’ ROBERT B. PARKER’…
what a joy that these timeless and treasured novels are available again.’ ED McBAIN

Nightmare in Pink

‘A knight in slightly tarnished armor, ‘ ‘the thinking man’s Robin Hood, ‘ McGee lives alone on his boat, the Busted Flush. Rejecting the modern world, adhering to a timeless sense of honor and obligation, he is more and less than a private eye. From the author of The Deep Blue Good by. From the Paperback edition.

A Purple Place for Dying

2 cassettes / 3 hoursRead by Darren McGavin’My favorite novelist of all time’ Dean Koontz’To diggers a thousand years from now…
the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.’ Kurt VonnegutTravis McGee is summoned to Arizona by a rich, beautiful arrogant woman. And then she’s dead shot in the back at long range, lying crumpled on the ground at his feet. With the would be client eliminated, and on a dime’s worth of fee in his pocket, any ordinary detective would walk away fast. But Travis McGee is no ordinary detective.

The Quick Red Fox

From the author of A Purple Place for Dying and The Deep Blue Good by comes the republication of the bestseller starring Travis McGee, a real American hero. Reissue. From the Paperback edition.

A Deadly Shade of Gold

When Travis McGee discovers a face from his past lying in a pool of blood on a cheap motel room floor, he wants answers. But so far, all he has are questions plus the dubious inheritance of his friend’s vengeance driven girlfriend, and a valuable ancient Aztec golden idol. Part rebel, part philosopher, and every inch his own man, Travis McGee plunges into a wild and perilous trek for a killer that takes him from the Lauderdale beaches to the seething corruption of American expatriates in a distant Mexican town, to the lush high life of the California jet set.’A master storyteller, a wizard of dialogue, characterization, and plot.’Chicago Tribune Book World

Bright Orange for the Shroud

2 cassettes / 3 hoursRead by Darren McGavin’…
what a joy that these timeless and treasured novels are available again.’ Ed McBain’…
on of the great sagas in American fiction.’ Robert B. Parker’…
the consummate pro, a master storyteller and witty observer.’ Jonathan KellermanTravis things he’s in for a quiet summer until a walking zombie of a man, Arthur Wilkinson, stumbles aboard The Busted Flush. He’s the latest victim of a fragile looking blond sexpot who uses the blackest arts of love to lure unsuspecting suckers into a web of sordid schemes., Gone, suddenly, are the lazy, hazy days of summer as Travis becomes embroiled in one of the most dangerous, dirties cases of his career.

Darker Than Amber

Travis McGee never shies away from damsels in distress. But this Eurasian beauty was different. When Travis and Meyer rescued her from the water, she had a block of cement wired to her feet, and she wasn’t so much grateful as ready to snare them in a murder racket to end all murders…
.’McGee has become part of our national fabric.’SEATTLE POST INTELLIGENCER

One Fearful Yellow Eye

‘To diggers a thousand yeasrs from now…
the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.’Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. How to you extort $600,000 from a dying man? Someone had done it very quietly and skilfully to the husband of Travis McGee’s ex girlfriend. McGee flies to Chicago to help untangle the mess and discovers that although Dr. Fortner Geis had led an exemplary life, there were those who’d take advantage of one ‘indiscretion’ and bring down the whole family. McGee also discovers he likes a few members of the family far too much to let that happen…
.

Pale Gray for Guilt

With an introduction by CARL HIAASENJOHN D. MacDONALD’…
the great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.’ STEPHEN KING’…
a master storyteller, a masterful suspense writer.’ MARY HIGGINS CLARK’…
a dominant influence on writers crafting the continuing series character.’ SUE GRAFTON’…
my favorite novelist of all time.’ DEAN KOONTZ’…
the consummate pro, a master storyteller and witty observer.’ JONATHAN KELLERMAN’…
remains one of my idols.’ DONALD WESTLAKETHE TRAVIS McGEE SERIES’…
one of the great sagas in American fiction.’ ROBERT B. PARKER’…
what a joy that these timeless and treasured novels are available again.’ ED McBAIN

The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

2 cassettes / 3 hoursRead by Darren McGavin’…
a master storyteller, a masterful suspense writer.’ MARY HIGGINS CLARK’…
a dominant influence on writers crafting the continuing series character.’ SUE GRAFTON All of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels are available from Random House AudioBooks Helena Pearson. Undeniably beautiful…
indisputably rich . . incredibly wanton…
the perfect client for Travis McGee. He did a big favor for her husband and then for the lady herself. Now Helena is dead, and McGee finds out that she had one last request to make of him: find out why her beautiful daughter, Maurie, keeps trying to kill herself. So, half convinced that Maurie needs a good doctor and not a devil may care beach bum, McGee makes his way to the prosperous town of Fort Courtney, Florida, a respectable, booming, deadly little place…
.

Dress Her in Indigo

‘To diggers a thousand years from now…
the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.’Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.A wealthy old man laid up in the hospital is desperate to understand the last months of his daughter’s life before she was killed in a car crash in Mexico. It was puzzling. She’d cleaned out her considerable bank account, left Miami and hadn’t been heard from again. Travis McGee ventures into the steep hills and strange backwoods of Oaxaca through a bizarre world of dropouts, drug freaks, and kinky rich people and begins to suspect the beautiful girl’s death was no accident…
.

The Long Lavender Look

‘McGee has become part of our national fabric.’SEATTLE POST INTELLIGENCERA lovely young girl steps in front of Travis McGee’s headlights. McGee misses the girl but lands in ten feet of swamp water. As he’s limping along the deserted road, someone in an old truck takes a few shots at him. And, when he goes to the local sheriff to complain, the intrepid Travis McGee finds himself arrested and charged with murder. And he can’t help but ask himself, is this what they call southern hospitality…
?From the Paperback edition.

A Tan and Sandy Silence

Private eye Travis McGee outwaits and outwits a deranged killer as he searches for a missing wife on a remote Caribbean island, where he also tangles with a baby faced businessman with a taste for murder. Book available.

The Scarlet Ruse

Travis McGee is too busy with his houseboat to pay attention to the little old man with the missing postage stamps. Except these are no ordinary stamps. They are rare stamps. Four hundred thousand dollars worth of rare. And if McGee doesn’t recognize their value, perhaps Mary Alice McDermit does, a six foot knockout who knows all the ways to a boat bum’s heart. Only it’s not McGee’s heart that’s in danger. Because a syndicate killer has put a contract on McGee. A killer who knows something about stamps…
and even more about McGee. From the Paperback edition.

The Turquoise Lament

‘One of the most enduring and unusual heroes in detective fiction.’THE BALTIMORE SUNNow that Linda ‘Pidge’ Lewellen is grown up, she tells Travis McGee, once her girlhood idol, that either she’s going crazy or Howie, her affable ex jock of a husband is trying to kill her. McGee checks things out, and gives Pidge the all clear. But when Pidge and Howie sail away to kiss and make up, McGee has second thoughts. If only he can get to Pidge before he has time for any more thinking…
. From the Paperback edition.

The Dreadful Lemon Sky

‘The professional’s professional of suspense writers.’THE NEW YORK TIMESTravis McGee has been offered easy money by a longtime lady friend. But when she gets killed, McGee’s got a boatload of mystery. Navigating his boat into troubled waters, he heads for the seamier side of Florida where drug dealing, twisted sex, and corruption are easy to find but murderous riddles are hard to solve…
.

The Empty Copper Sea

McGee is hired to find the truth behind a man’s disappearance. Is the man accused of murder guilty or the victim of an elaborate hoax? 2 cassettes.

The Green Ripper

‘McGee has become part of our national fabric.’SEATTLE POST INTELLIGENCERBeautiful girls always grace the Florida beaches, strolling, sailing, relaxing at the many parties on Travis McGee’s houseboat, The Busted Flush. McGee was too smart and had been around too long for many of them to touch his heart. Now, however, there was Gretel. She had discovered the key to McGee to all of him and now he had something to hope for. Then, terribly, unexpectedly, she was dead. From a mysterious illness, or so they said. But McGee knew the truth, that Gretel had been murdered. And now he was out for blood…
From the Paperback edition.

Free Fall in Crimson

‘McGee has become part of our national fabric.’SEATTLE POST INTELLIGENCERThis time out, McGee came close to losing his status as a living legend when he agreed to track down the killers who brutally murdered an ailing millionaire. For starters, he renewed an unfinished adventure with a famous and oversexed Hollywood actress, who led him into a very nasty nest of murderers involving a motorcycle gang, po*rnographic movies, and mad balloonists. And Mcgee relearned the old lesson that only when he came close to the edge of death was he completely alive. From the Paperback edition.

Cinnamon Skin

When Travis McGee’s friend Meyer lent his boat to his niece Norma, and her new husband Even, the boat exploded out in the waters of the Florida Keys. Travis McGee thinks it’s no accident, and clues lead him to ponder possibilities of drugs and also to wonder where Evan was when his wife was killed…
.’Proves again that MacDonald keeps getting better with each new adventure.’THE ASSOCIATED PRESSFrom the Paperback edition.

The Lonely Silver Rain

‘Travis McGee is back in action and he is in fine, fine form…
. What a treat. It is John D. MacDonald’s 21st Travies McGee book and, without reservaton, his best.’THE SAN DIEGO TRIBUNESearching for a wealthy friend’s yacht, Travis McGee puts himself square in the center of the international cocaine trade, and finds himself the target of some of the most ruthless villains he’s ever met. Contemplating his own mortality for the first time, Travis McGee discovers amid all the danger the astonishing surprise behind the cat shaped pipe cleaners someone is leaving at his door. This is vintage McGee in a novel that confirms John D. MacDonald’s reputation as one of the greatest storytellers of all time.

A Bullet for Cinderella

Her veneer was big city…
but one look and you knew that Toni Rassell’s instincts were straight out of the river shack she came from. I watched her as she toyed with the man, laughing, her tumbled hair like raw blue black silk, her brown shoulders bare. Eyes deep set, a girl with a gypsy look. So this was the girl I had risked my life to find. This was the girl who was going to lead me to a buried fortune in stolen loot.

On the Make

The Empty Trap

When Lloyd Westcott was hired to build and run the Green Oasis casino he didn’t ask about the owner or where the backing came from. He didn’t care, as long as the place was legit and he could run it clean as a whistle. But then the Big Man moved in.

Cape Fear

An insane criminal threatens to destroy a family, and the police are powerless to protect them. For fourteen years convicted rapist Max Cady nursed his hatred for Sam Bowden into an insane passion for revenge. He lived only for the day he would be free free to track down and destroy the man who had put him behind bars. Murder was merciful compared to what Cady had in mind and what Cady had in mind was Bowden’s innocent and lovely teenaged daughter…
.’A powerful and frightening story.’ The New York Times

Slam the Big Door

Published as a paperback original in 1960, this is MacDonald’s favorite among his own novels, available for the first time in a quality hardcover edition.

A Flash of Green

James Wing told himself he was only trying to help his friend’s widow when he warned Kat Hubble that the beautiful bay she and her neighbors had struggled to save was going to be sold to developers. He knew he shouldn’t have told her anything. He was a reporter, trained to reveal nothing. But he was falling in love with her. Now the developers have set their sights on Kat Hubble, and they’ll do anything, use anyone, to stop her from interfering in their plans…
.

The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything

To ever loyal Kirby Winter, multimillionaire Uncle Omar left nothing nothing but a gold watch and a sealed letter to be opened in one year. But Kirby is destined to inherit the magical power to freeze time in its tracks. Power like that promises unlimited wealth, wealth that can’t buy love, but does make a down payment on a lot of deadly trouble. In a universe without time, can Kirby stay one step ahead?

Condominium

John D. MacDonald donated his private and professional correspondence, personal and business papers, manuscripts, typescripts, and library to the University of Florida Libraries and additionally provided an endowment for the purchase of MacDonald related materials. To further support the Libraries, he arranged to have a special issue of his novel Condominium with a specially printed endpaper autographed by MacDonald for the purpose of raising funds for the Libraries. The copy you receive will be taken from the original publisher’s shipping carton.

One More Sunday

Welcome to the Eternal Church of the Believer, where devout workers operate state of the art computer equipment to solicit and process the thousands of dollars that pour in daily…
where hundreds of prayers are offered by armies of believers…
where some people give much more than they should. Its home is Meadows Center, some very expensive real estate on the outskirts of a sleepy Southern town, a jealously guarded complex of offices, houses, schools, and, of course, churches. Meet John Tinker Meadows, who heads the church now that his father is secretly dying…
the Reverend Joe Deets, who lusts after very young women…
Walter Macy, pompous and self righteous, who blackmails his way to his secret ambition…
the Reverend Mary Margaret Meadows, a powerhouse in her own right. And pity poor Roy Owen, an outsider who comes to Meadows Center on a desperate search for his wife, the journalist who vanished after asking some hard questions about the inner workings of the Eternal Church of the Believer…
. ‘Brilliantly done.’ The New York Times Book Review

Barrier Island

There are two kinds of men in Mississippi. They make natural enemies. And sometimes, but only if the balance between strength and weakness tips too far, unnatural allies. Tucker Loomis is a hard and dangerous man with a ruthlessness all West Bay fears and respects, and an improbable amount of money. Wade Rowley is a common man who aspires to honor but gets caught up in the footwork of a skilled swindler. In a pitiless game, with a few harsh rules and just one way of keeping score, the wrong man will die. And another will get away with more than murder.’Lively, gritty…
complex and convincing…
Mr. MacDonald writes with passion!’ The New York Times Book Review

More Good Old Stuff

Anthologies containing stories by John D. MacDonald. Fifty Short Science Fiction Tales.