Jennifer Lynn Barnes Books in Order
Browse all Jennifer Lynn Barnes books in order, with series lists, quick summaries, and tips on the best places to start her YA mysteries and fantasies.
Last updated: June 7, 2026
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Publication Order
30 books
Golden
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2006
After moving from California to Oklahoma, Lissy James lands in a school ruled by glittering Goldens and wary Nons. Her secret ability to see auras reveals a terrifying emptiness around one teacher and a danger no one else notices.
Platinum
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2007
At Emory High, Lilah Covington sits above even the other Goldens, certain she controls everything. Then eerie visions and a persistent ghost unravel her perfect image, forcing her to team up with Lissy to solve a decades old mystery.
Tattoo
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2007
Bailey Morgan and her three best friends pick out mysterious temporary tattoos for a school dance and wake up with real supernatural powers. As Bailey’s dreams darken, the girls realize they were chosen to stop an ancient, hungry enemy.
Killer Spirit
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2008
Being a cheerleader spy is hard enough, but now Toby is a front runner for homecoming queen. As the Squad investigates a new threat in Bayport, squad politics, romance, and danger collide on and off the football field.
Perfect Cover
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2008
Hacker and karate black belt Toby Klein is stunned when Bayport High’s elite cheerleaders recruit her. Their squad is actually a covert government unit, and Toby’s new life means juggling advanced spy missions with fake smiles and pep rallies.
Fate
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2009
Two years after her magical tattoo, Bailey has become the third Fate, weaving the world’s destiny while still trying to pass high school. Meeting the beautiful, ruthless Sidhe forces her to question whether she can choose her own future.
Raised by Wolves
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2010
Human teen Bryn was adopted by a werewolf alpha after a rogue wolf killed her parents. Years later she discovers a newly turned boy locked in the pack’s basement and risks pack law, and her safety, to uncover the truth.
Every Other Day
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2011
Every other day, Kali D’Angelo is an ordinary sixteen year old. On the alternating days she becomes a nearly invincible hunter drawn to monsters. When she spots a classmate marked for death on a human day, she rushes to intervene.
Trial by Fire
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2011
Now alpha of her own small pack, Bryn is still human in a world ruled by wolves. When a battered teenage Were begs for sanctuary, she is pulled into werewolf politics and a deadly struggle over who gets to lead.
Taken by Storm
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2012
Bryn must stand before the powerful werewolf Senate while a rogue killer stalks human victims on her territory. With rival alphas circling and bodies mounting, she has to decide what she will sacrifice to keep her pack alive.
Nobody
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2013
Raised as a living weapon, Nix is a Nobody, a boy who slips through life unseen. His latest assignment is to kill Claire, a girl who has spent her life being overlooked, until their first meeting reveals they are the same.
The Naturals
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2013
Seventeen year old Cassie Hobbes can read people with unsettling precision. Recruited into a secret FBI program for gifted teens, she joins a houseful of other Naturals and is quickly drawn into a serial killer case that feels disturbingly personal.
Killer Instinct
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2014
After barely surviving their first case, Cassie and the Naturals plan to stick to cold files. Then a new killer starts copying the methods of Dean’s notorious father, dragging the team into a live investigation and even darker psychological territory.
All In
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2015
A string of showy murders in Las Vegas sends Cassie and the Naturals to the Strip. The killer changes methods with every crime, leaving only coded number tattoos, while new evidence about Cassie’s mother threatens to break the team’s focus.
The Fixer
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2015
When Tess Kendrick moves to Washington, DC, she discovers her glamorous sister Ivy is the capital’s go to fixer, cleaning up political scandals. At Hardwicke Academy, Tess starts handling problems for powerful classmates and uncovers a conspiracy that turns deadly.
Bad Blood
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2016
Cassie finally gets a real lead on her mother’s disappearance and uncovers a secretive network of killers operating for generations. As bodies begin to appear, the Naturals must confront their own pasts while realizing someone is now hunting them.
The Long Game
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2016
Tess agrees to manage a classmate’s student council campaign, only to find that at Hardwicke Academy even school elections come with blackmail and hidden agendas. Outside campus, a terror attack rocks Washington, tying Tess and Ivy to a far larger plot.
Twelve
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2017
Years later, Cassie and her fellow Naturals run the FBI program themselves. A twelve year old girl threatens to jump from a lighthouse unless they investigate a cluster of teen deaths in Maine, forcing the team to face old ghosts.
Little White Lies
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2018
Sawyer Taft is an eighteen year old mechanic who agrees to a lucrative contract from the wealthy grandmother she barely knows: endure a season of debutante events. Surrounded by gowns and gossip, she hunts for the truth about her father.
Deadly Little Scandals
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2019
After debutante season, Sawyer is drafted into the secretive White Gloves society. A discovery near the family’s summer home exposes a decades old scandal, and Sawyer must decide how much truth she is willing to dig up in high society.
The Lovely and the Lost
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2019
As a child, Kira Bennett was found living feral in the woods. Now she trains elite search and rescue dogs with her adoptive family. When a child vanishes in a vast national park, the search forces Kira to confront her buried past.
The Inheritance Games
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2020
Scholarship hopeful Avery Grambs expects to scrape through high school, not inherit a billionaire’s fortune. To claim it she has to move into Hawthorne House for a year, living with the disinherited grandsons and solving the late patriarch’s dangerous puzzles.
The Hawthorne Legacy
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2021
Still living at Hawthorne House, Avery chases clues about her own past and a missing heir tied to the Hawthorne family. Secrets about a long ago fire and a girl named Emily pull her deeper into rivalries that could turn deadly.
The Final Gambit
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2022
With her year in Hawthorne House almost over, Avery is close to securing the fortune when a stranger claiming ties to the will appears. A new game involving kidnappings, old enemies, and the Hawthorne Island fire forces one last ruthless play.
The Brothers Hawthorne
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2023
Grayson flies to Arizona to help half sisters who do not know he exists, while Jameson heads to London to infiltrate a secret gambling society for his father. Their separate missions, and Avery’s involvement, reveal fresh dangers from the Hawthorne legacy.
Games Untold
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2024
This novella collection returns to the Inheritance Games world with romantic interludes and side adventures. Readers glimpse a wild trip to Prague, Xander’s cowboy escapades, a goth romance, holiday games, and quiet nights that fill in the gaps between main novels.
The Grandest Game
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2024
Avery Grambs and the Hawthorne brothers invite seven contestants to Hawthorne Island for a twelve hour competition worth millions. Locked room puzzles, shifting teams, and secret agendas turn the Grandest Game into a test of loyalty as much as intellect.
Glorious Rivals
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2025
In the second round of the Grandest Game, surviving players face new challenges aboard a luxury yacht and back on Hawthorne Island. Old alliances fracture, new romances spark, and it becomes clear that someone intends the contest to end in blood.
The Same Backward as Forward
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2025
Hannah Rooney, tied to a criminal family, is trying to keep her head down in a coastal town when she helps nurse a shipwrecked young man with no memory. He is Tobias Hawthorne II, and their grief soaked love story reshapes everything.
The Gilded Blade
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2026
This finale to the Hawthorne saga brings every rivalry and secret game to a breaking point. As the latest competition unfolds, long hidden truths about the family, their enemies, and the cost of winning force each player to decide what matters most.
Where should I start?
If you love twisty puzzles and found family: The Inheritance Games → The Hawthorne Legacy → The Final Gambit → The Brothers Hawthorne.
If you want dark crime and psychological tension: The Naturals → Killer Instinct → All In → Bad Blood → Twelve.
If political intrigue and power plays appeal to you: The Fixer → The Long Game.
If you prefer paranormal fantasy and monsters: Raised by Wolves → Trial by Fire → Taken by Storm or Tattoo → Fate.
Author bio
Jennifer Lynn Barnes was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1984 and grew up reading widely, cheering, dancing, and trying on a lot of different lives. Very early on she was as interested in how stories worked in the mind as in the stories themselves.
Over the years she has also been a competitive cheerleader, a volleyball player, a dancer, a debutante, a teen model, a comic book fan, and a researcher who spent time working with primates.
As a teenager she started filling notebooks with fiction and finished her first full novel while she was still in high school, a project she now calls a practice book. During the summer after her freshman year of college she wrote Golden and, at nineteen, sold it for publication.
Barnes graduated from high school in 2002 and headed to Yale University, where she majored in cognitive science and studied how people think, feel, and imagine. After completing her bachelor’s degree in 2006, she spent a year at the University of Cambridge as a Fulbright Scholar, doing research on topics like autism and primate cognition.
She returned to Yale for graduate school and earned her PhD in 2012. Across those years she was living a real double life, going to classes by day and drafting novels late at night, and she sold her first five books while she was still a student.
In addition to writing, Barnes has built a career in academia. She became a professor at the University of Oklahoma, with a joint appointment in psychology and professional writing, and she runs a research lab that studies the psychology of fandom and the way stories shape our thoughts and feelings.
Her research and her fiction feed each other. She has written original pilot scripts for television networks, and she often talks about using insights from cognitive science to understand why certain plots, character types, and twists are so satisfying to readers.
On the page, Barnes started out writing paranormal and urban fantasy for teens, with books like Golden, Tattoo, Fate, Raised by Wolves, and Every Other Day. Those early novels mix magic, monsters, and mythology with very down to earth questions about friendship, identity, and who gets to hold power.
She later turned to contemporary thrillers and mysteries. The Naturals books follow a group of gifted teens working with the FBI to profile serial killers, while The Fixer and The Long Game drop a small town girl into Washington politics, private school intrigues, and the kind of back room deals usually reserved for adults.
More recently, her work has centered on twisty, puzzle driven stories. The Debutantes duet, starting with Little White Lies, sends a mechanic into the world of Southern debutantes and secret societies, and the standalone The Lovely and the Lost pairs a missing person case with search and rescue dogs and a heroine haunted by her own time lost in the woods.
The Inheritance Games and its companion novels have brought her to an even wider audience. In those books, an ordinary girl inherits a billionaire’s fortune and finds herself living in a house full of hidden passageways, dangerous riddles, and Hawthorne brothers who are as complicated as the games they love to play.
Through all of this, Barnes has kept teaching and working with students, helping them see how science and storytelling can speak to each other. She lives in Oklahoma with her family, raising three sons and writing the next mystery between classes, lab meetings, and school runs.
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