Gregg Hurwitz’s Orphan X Books in Order (2025 Edition)

The Orphan X series began in 2016 and has since expanded to include 10 books and 5 short stories, with an eleventh book on the way. If you want to read all the Orphan X books in order, you will find all the details on this page!

The Orphan X series tells the tale of Evan Smoak, a highly skilled individual who has become a freelance assassin, ultimately becoming a vigilante of sorts. After every successful job, he tells the person to give his phone number to someone else who might need his help.

Like his current life, his beginning years weren’t very normal either. After being plucked from a group home at the tender age of twelve, Evan was put into the Orphan Program. In this program, orphans were trained to become assassins, and Evan was known as “Orphan X” under the program until he broke away and disappeared.

To add to his troubles, others from the same program are after him. Of course, he can’t let this stand and has to figure out why, all while keeping himself alive.

All The Orphan X Books in Order (2023):

1. Orphan X (2016)

The Nowhere Man is a legendary figure spoken about only in whispers. It’s said that when he’s reached by the truly desperate and deserving, the Nowhere Man can and will do anything to protect and save them. But he’s not merely a legend.

Evan Smoak is a man with skills, resources, and a personal mission to help those with nowhere else to turn. He’s also a man with a dangerous past. Chosen as a child, he was raised and trained as an Orphan, an off-the-books black box program designed to create the perfect deniable intelligence asset: An assassin.

Evan was Orphan X—until he broke with the program and used everything he learned to disappear. But now someone is on his tail. Someone with similar skills and training who will exploit Evan’s secret new identity as the Nowhere Man to eliminate him.

1.5. Buy A Bullet (2016) – Short Story

Before he was the Nowhere Man, Evan Smoak was a highly trained government operative known to a few as Orphan X.

This is the story of Smoak’s first outing as the Nowhere Man, where, after completing a mission in Northern California, he happens to spot a young woman at a coffee shop.

Brutalized and under the control of a very powerful, unscrupulous man, her life is in danger if she doesn’t escape. And the only person who can help her do that is a man with the background and skills of the Nowhere Man.

2. The Nowhere Man (2017)

As a boy, Evan Smoak was taken from a children’s home, raised and trained as part of a secret government initiative buried so deep that virtually no one knows it exists. But he broke with the programme, choosing instead to vanish off grid and use his formidable skill set to help those unable to protect themselves.

One day, though, Evan’s luck ran out!

Ambushed, drugged, and spirited away, Evan wakes up in a locked room with no idea where he is or who has captured him. As he tries to piece together what’s happened, testing his gilded prison and its highly trained guards for weaknesses, he receives a desperate call for help.

With time running out, he will need to out-think, out-manoeuvre, and out-fight an opponent the likes of whom he’s never encountered to have any chance of escape!

3. Hellbent (2018)

To some, he was Orphan X. Others knew him as the Nowhere Man. But to Jack Johns, he was a boy named Evan Smoak.

Taken from an orphanage, Evan was raised inside a top-secret government programme and trained to become a lethal weapon by Jack. And yet for all the dangerous skills he instilled in his young charge, Jack Jones cared for Evan like a son.

But Jack knew too much about a programme that had gone rotten; he was a loose end that needed to be dealt with. But if you go after the only person who ever treated him like a human being, you can guarantee that the Nowhere Man will be coming for you, hellbent on making things right!

3.5. The Intern (2018) – Short Story

The Nowhere Man is a figure shrouded in secrecy who helps the truly desperate, those with nowhere else to turn, who are fortunate enough to reach out to him.

Before he was the Nowhere Man, Evan Smoak was a highly trained government operative known to a few as Orphan X. But he now lives by hiding in plain sight, keeping his head down and his eyes clear.

So when a local summer intern for a tabloid news site finds herself trailing an aggressive reporter into a crime zone, things go terribly awry. The only person who can help her is a man with the background and the skills of the Nowhere Man.

4. Out of the Dark (2019)

Evan’s past in the Orphan Program is catching up with him. Someone at the very highest level of government has been trying to eliminate every trace of the Orphan Program by killing all the remaining Orphans and their trainers.

After Evan’s mentor and the only father he ever knew was killed, he decided to strike back. His target is the man who initiated the program and is now the most heavily protected person in the world: the President of the United States.

But President Bennett knows that Orphan X is after him, and using his own weapons, he has decided to counterattack. Bennett activates the one man who has the skills and experience to track down and eliminate Orphan X—the first recruit of the program, Orphan A.

With Evan devoting all his skills, resources, and intelligence to finding a way through the layers of security that surround the President, he suddenly has to protect himself against the deadliest of opponents.

5. Into the Fire (2020)

After breaking with the program, he reinvented himself as The Nowhere Man, but the government didn’t let go of him easily, sending their best to hunt him down and eliminate him. All of them failed. With his deadliest enemies behind him, Evan is facing a new challenge—what is he going to do now that no one is after him?

Max Merriweather is at the end of his rope. Separated from the woman he loves and barely scraping by, Max is a disappointment to everyone in his life. Then his very successful cousin Grant is brutally murdered.

Two months before, Grant left Max an envelope with instructions to take it to a reporter if anything happened to him. Now the reporter is missing, and Max’s apartment is ransacked. A man at the end of his rope, he calls The Nowhere Man.

With mixed feelings, Evan takes on this mission, easily finding the men who are after Max and executing a plan to keep him safe. But it isn’t as obvious as it seems—and Evan finds himself enmeshed in one of the most challenging missions of his life, one that he can’t survive on his own.

5.5. The List (2020) – Short Story

Joey Morales was the last recruit of the government’s full black operation, the Orphan Program. Trained to be an assassin until she washed out, she was rescued by Evan Smoak, the former agent known as Orphan X. Now Joey, still a teenager and under the watchful eye of Evan Smoak, lives on her own and attends college.

While on campus, she tries to stop a young woman’s suicide attempt and fails. Then Joey uncovers the reason for Becca Morgan’s desperate act, which was a document called The List, which ranks and rates women around campus based on their sexual appeal and performance.

Determined to find the boys behind The List, the ones whose callous acts drove Becca Morgan to suicide, Joey recruits the help of her mentor, Orphan X, and uses all her skills to uncover and expose the ones responsible!

6. Prodigal Son (2021)

The highest power in the country has made Evan Smoak a tempting offer. In exchange for an unofficial pardon, he must stop his clandestine activities as The Nowhere Man. Now Evan has to do the one thing he’s least equipped to do―live a normal life.

But then he gets a call for help from the one person he never expected. A woman claiming to have given him up for adoption, a woman he never knew―his mother. Her unlikely request: help Andrew Duran―a man whose life has gone off the rails, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, bringing him to the deadly attention of very powerful figures.

Now, a brutal brother-sister assassination team is after him, and with no one to turn to and no safe place to hide, Evan is Duran’s only option. But when the hidden cabal catches on to what Evan is doing, everything he’s fought for is on the line, including his own life.

7. Dark Horse (2022)

Evan Smoak is a man with many identities and a challenging past. Having just survived an attack on his life and the complete devastation of his base of operations, as well as his complicated relationship with his neighbor Mia Hall, Evan isn’t interested in taking on a new mission. But one finds him anyway!

Aragon Urrea is a kingpin of a major drug-dealing operation in South Texas. He’s also the patron of the local area—supplying employment in legitimate operations, providing help to the helpless, meting out rough justice to the downtrodden, and offering a future to people typically with little hope.

He’s complicated, a not completely good man, who does bad things for often good reasons. However, for all his money and power, he is helpless when one of the most vicious cartels kidnaps his innocent eighteen-year-old daughter. With no other way to rescue his daughter, he turns to The Nowhere Man.

Now, not only must Evan figure out how to get into the impregnable fortress of a heavily armed, deeply paranoid cartel leader, but he must decide if he should help this man, no matter how just the cause!

8. The Last Orphan (2023)

When Evan Smoak remade himself as The Nowhere Man, dedicated to helping the most desperate in their times of trouble, Evan found himself slowly back on the government’s radar.

Having eliminated most of the Orphans in the program, the government will stop at nothing to eliminate the threat they see in Evan. But Orphan X has always been several steps ahead of his pursuers, until he makes one little mistake!

Now the President has him in her control and offers Evan a deal: eliminate a rich, powerful man she says is too dangerous to live, and in turn, she’ll let Evan survive. But when Evan left the Program, he swore to use his skills only against those who truly deserved it. Now he has to decide what’s more important – his principles or his life.

8.5. The Recital (2023) – Short Story

Joey Morales was the last recruit of the government’s full black operation, the Orphan Program. Trained to be an assassin until she washed out, she was rescued by Evan Smoak, the former agent known as Orphan X. Now, Joey, a world-class hacker, starts training for one of her biggest challenges yet, which is having a normal life.

Still a teenager, she discovers she loves music as much as hacking, if not more so. But as she carves out a space for herself, the one thing missing is a family to support her endeavors. When a major recital comes up, she asks her rescuer-turned-adopted uncle, Evan, to recruit his various friends into another operation—attending her performance.

And while Evan doesn’t understand why she wants them there, he won’t let her be disappointed, no matter what!

9. Lone Wolf (2024)

Evan has fought international crime syndicates and drug cartels, faced down the most powerful men in the world, and even brought down a President. Now, struggling with an unexpected personal crisis, Evan goes back to the very basics of his mission. This time, the truly desperate is a little girl who wants him to find her missing dog.

Not his usual mission, and not one Evan embraces with enthusiasm. Still, this unlikely, tiny job quickly explodes into his biggest mission yet, one that finds him battered between twisted AI technocrat billionaires. This mysterious female assassin seems a mirror of himself, and the personal stakes are so gut-wrenching that he can scarcely make sense of them.

Evan’s mission pushes him to his limit; he must find and take down the assassin known only as the Wolf before she succeeds in completing her mission and killing the people who can identify her—a teenage daughter of her last target and Evan himself.

10. Nemesis (2025)

Evan Smoak is a highly trained former government assassin who has survived for years by keeping his circle small and consisting of a few trusted confidants, as well as adhering to a strict code he calls “The Ten Commandments.” But when Evan suddenly finds himself at odds with his oldest friend, all the rules he lives by shatter, and the consequences are murderous.

Tommy Stojack might be Evan’s best friend in the world. He’s a gifted gunsmith who has created much of Evan’s own weapons and combat gear. But now, he has apparently crossed one of Evan’s hardest lines, and their argument explodes into open warfare. Now Evan has no choice but to track and face down his only friend.

In the meantime, Tommy has left town to honor his own promise to help a deceased friend’s son. While Tommy is fighting to save the son with everything he’s got, Evan arrives with vengeance in mind.

But as deadly as the former Orphan X is, there is an even more dangerous threat about to arrive on the scene. The only question left is, will any of them survive?

10.5. The Code (2025) – Short Story

Before he was the feared black ops government assassin, Orphan X, operating in the shadows and spoken about in whispers, Evan Smoak was a teenager undergoing the most rigorous training.

At 17, Evan is sent off by his handler, former CIA station agent Jack Johns, to attend the most intense U.S. military training course. However, that is only part of the challenge before him, as Evan must get there and back safely and quietly, maintaining operational security.

And along the way, facing unexpected challenges, Evan must use everything he’s learned since the day he was taken from the foster home in East Baltimore, lessons that Jack Johns has drilled into him, laws of life and death that are to become The Code.

11. Antihero (Expected in 2026)

When Luke Devine, one of the most powerful men in the world, has a psychological crisis, Evan flies to the East Coast to meet Luke. While there, he learns of a young woman who was kidnapped off the New York City subway, clearly in danger and in need of aid.

With no name and few clues, Evan and his team track down the missing woman, who was assaulted and abandoned. Evan offers his help and sets out to track down the young men responsible. But the woman insists that Evan abandon his usual methods―no vengeance and, in particular, no killing, which will prove no easy feat given the mounting incoming threats from all sides.

In a mission that takes Evan from coast to coast, from the poorest corners of society to the richest, Orphan X must figure out a way to protect the innocent, avenge the victimized, and balance justice with a measure of mercy.

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