Do you want to read Craig Schaefer’s Daniel Faust books in order? If yes, you are on the right page, as this article will help you with the correct reading order!
The Daniel Faust series by Craig Schaefer blends gritty crime noir with dark urban fantasy, creating a world where magic, demons, and the criminal underworld collide.
Set in Las Vegas, the series follows Daniel Faust, a sorcerer and con man who navigates supernatural threats, mob ties, and moral gray zones. With sharp dialogue, fast pacing, and layered characters, the series has earned a strong following among fans of occult thrillers.
Craig Schaefer, the author behind the series, has built a larger fictional universe that includes The Harmony Black and Wisdom’s Grave series, which occasionally cross over with the Daniel Faust books. While each series can be read independently, reading them in the right order reveals deeper connections and character arcs.
In this guide, we’ll focus on how to read the Daniel Faust series in order—whether you’re starting for the first time or catching up. Understanding the sequence will help you follow the overarching storylines and enjoy the character development as it unfolds.
All Daniel Faust Books in Order:
Craig Schaefer has written a total of 11 books and one novella in his Daniel Faust series. Below is a list of all books in publication order!
- The Long Way Down (2014)
- The White Gold Score (2016) – A Novella
- Redemption Song (2014)
- The Living End (2014)
- A Plain-Dealing Villain (2015)
- The Killing Floor Blues (2015)
- The Castle Doctrine (2016)
- Double or Nothing (2017)
- The Neon Boneyard (2018)
- The Locust Job (2019)
- Down Among the Dead Men (2022)
- Dig Two Graves (2024)
Craig Schaefer’s Daniel Faust Series Reading Order:
1. The Long Way Down (2014)
Nobody knows the seedy underbelly of Las Vegas like Daniel Faust, a sorcerer for hire and ex-gangster who uses black magic and bullets to solve his clients’ problems. When an old man comes seeking vengeance for his murdered granddaughter, what looks like a simple job quickly spirals out of control.
Soon Daniel stands in the crossfire between a murderous porn director; a corrupt cop with a quick trigger finger; and his former employer, a racket boss who isn’t entirely human.
Then there’s Caitlin: brilliant, beautiful, and the lethal right hand of a demon prince.
Faust should know what happens when you rub shoulders with demons. Still, he can’t resist being drawn to Caitlin’s flame as they race to unlock the secret of the Etruscan Box, a relic that people all over town are dying—and killing—to get their hands on!
1.5. The White Gold Score (2016)
When a high roller dies in his Vegas penthouse suite, that’s a problem. When his ghost refuses to leave, that’s a bigger problem. Daniel Faust is the solution!
Called in to clean up the casino’s mess, the modern-day sorcerer soon learns that the restless spirit isn’t going down without a fight. To set things right, he’ll have to delve someplace even seedier, even more treacherous, than the Vegas Strip: the Los Angeles music industry.
In a snare between a scheming record producer, an embattled songstress, and a lethal drug cartel, Daniel and his crew hit the streets of LA. Opportunity is knocking. There’s a score to be had. And with a quarter of a million dollars on the table, this murder mystery became a heist.
2. Redemption Song (2014)
Daniel Faust, a Las Vegas sorcerer and career criminal, has never pulled the trigger on an innocent man. When the infernal Prince Sitri challenges him to do just that, he can’t walk away. His lover, Caitlin, is Sitri’s right hand, and if Daniel refuses the job, he’ll never see her again.
While Daniel works to unravel Sitri’s twisted game, putting his principles and his life on the line, Caitlin has problems of her own. A pack of renegade halfbloods is in town, armed to the teeth and aiming to go to war with hell itself.
Their leader is a bad memory from Caitlin’s past, one she thought dead and buried centuries ago, and he’s got revenge on his mind.
As if that isn’t bad enough, the fallout from Daniel’s last job descends in the form of an FBI task force aimed at putting him and everyone he cares about behind bars.
3. The Living End (2014)
As the FBI closes in on the Las Vegas underworld, Daniel Faust isn’t the only one feeling the heat. Half-demon racket boss Nicky Agnelli fights to hang onto his empire, while Daniel’s ex-girlfriend Jennifer aims at Nicky’s crown.
Meanwhile, homeless people are vanishing by the dozens. Daniel has bigger problems to worry about, but a plea from an old friend sends him on a search for answers. What he finds is a conspiracy twenty years in the making, involving a power-hungry senator, occult experiments, murderous British mercenaries… and Lauren Carmichael, Daniel’s nemesis.
From a gunfight in the Arizona badlands to unearthing buried secrets in a New York laboratory, the hunt is on. With Lauren’s deadly plan revealed and time running out, Daniel and his crew will stop at nothing to take her down.
She’s got the law in her pocket and a hired army at her back. He’s got black magic, bullets, and the art of the con. It’s high noon in Vegas, and when the dust settles, only one side will be left standing!
4. A Plain-Dealing Villain (2015)
It’s hard to make a dishonest buck in Sin City, especially when a rogue FBI agent is gunning for your head. Flat broke and one step ahead of the law, Daniel Faust flees Vegas and lands in Chicago, where a risky heist promises to fill his pockets with cash.
There are the risks you can account for, and then there are the risks you never see coming, leaving you blindsided and fighting to survive. Daniel is a stranger in a strange land, out of his element, surrounded by corrupt sorcerers, demons, and worse.
Still, with a friend’s soul hanging in the balance—not to mention a pile of stolen cash—giving up isn’t an option.
Before he’s done, Daniel will descend into the depths of Chicago’s occult netherworld, competing in an underground poker tournament where the winner takes all. But with the infernal Court of Night-Blooming Flowers running the show, “winner takes all” has an entirely new meaning.
5. The Killing Floor Blues (2015)
Nobody has ever escaped from the Iceberg. It’s a privately-owned prison deep in the Mojave Desert, staffed by brutal guards and surrounded by desolate wasteland. Inside the walls, gangs and predators are constant threats; outside the walls, there’s nothing but a sniper’s bullet or a slow death in the desert heat.
Framed for murder and snared in a deadly curse, Daniel Faust lands behind bars with a target on his back. Worse, with Faust out of the picture, the Chicago mob is making its bid for control of Las Vegas. None of his friends are safe if he can’t escape in time to stop them.
Then there’s the matter of the warden’s dark secret, the one that’s filling up the prison morgue with body bags!
Faust has been caged, buried, and cut off from his allies and his magic. His enemies think they’ve won. They’re about to learn, the hard way, that this is one sorcerer who always has a trick up his sleeve!
6. The Castle Doctrine (2016)
Out of prison and back on the streets, Daniel Faust returns home to a city on fire. The Chicago mob is making their play for control of Las Vegas, with an army of gunmen and a lethal shapeshifter on their side, while Daniel’s friend Jennifer marshals the forces of the Vegas underworld.
Staying on the sidelines isn’t an option, especially when a Metro detective orders him to get the war under control—and if he can’t, he’ll expose Daniel’s secrets to the FBI.
It’s a bad time for ghosts of the past to come calling, but Damien Ecko is on his way with a hit list and a legion of walking corpses. Marked for death by the courts of hell, the mad necromancer plans on making sure that everyone who framed him, Daniel first and foremost, dies along with him.
Hunted by the living and the dead, pushed to his limits, Daniel will have to be smarter, faster, and more ruthless than ever. He’ll need to call upon new, dark powers and darker allies!
7. Double or Nothing (2017)
Daniel Faust has debts to pay. One of those debts has just come due, an IOU to be paid in the form of a high-risk heist, and it’s a job he can’t refuse.
The mark? Daniel’s archnemesis, a man with a Cheshire smile and the powers of a living god. The score? A sacrificial dagger buried under layers of electronic, occult, and human security, snug on the far side of a custom-built deathtrap.
Normally, a heist like that would end Daniel’s problems. This time, it’s only the beginning.
Caitlin, Daniel’s lover and the right hand of a demon prince, faces her own threat. She’s adept at navigating the politics of Hell, keeping the peace with diplomatic grace and a whip, but a plan years in the making has left a ticking time bomb under her feet.
When it explodes, it will send shockwaves through the infernal courts – and expose one of Caitlin’s darkest secrets. A hidden enemy has targeted Caitlin and Daniel for destruction and aims to lure them into an impossible snare. For one of them to escape, the other must die.
8. The Neon Boneyard (2018)
Daniel Faust has clawed his way from the gutter to a penthouse suite, carving a bloody swath across the Las Vegas underworld. He has buried his enemies and more than a few friends, and if there’s one thing a modern-day sorcerer knows, it’s that the past never stays buried forever.
Now he’s running on ice, juggling his responsibilities as a mob boss with his dubious “gift” of a knighthood in the courts of hell, defending territory in two worlds at once.
It’s a bad time for unfinished business to come back and haunt him, forcing him to confront his tortured history and the family he left behind. An even worse time for his surviving foes to join forces and take deadly aim at Faust’s throne.
Toss in a syndicate operative from a parallel world, a deranged half-demon assassin hungry for a duel, and the shadowy machinations of the King of Worms, and the stage is set for a showdown under the neon lights of Vegas.
9. The Locust Job (2019)
The first story ever told left a scar on the universe’s skin, with its characters doomed to an endless cycle of reincarnation and death. Trapped by his enemies, Daniel Faust—magician, mobster, and newly-minted knight of hell—has been cast as the eternal Thief. Now, the story is dead-set on writing his final chapter, which ends with a knife in his back.
The curse can’t be broken without tracking down the original Thief. The truth is buried beneath the legacy of a long-dead stage magician and a cache of occult relics from the 1940s.
But Daniel and his crew aren’t the only hunters on this trail: so is a deadly new contender who blends sorcery with science, armed with a link to Daniel’s past—and a cult he thought he had destroyed long ago.
The doomsday clock is ticking, and more than Daniel’s own life is at stake. To save the day, he’ll have to pull off the most daring heist of his criminal career, stealing a priceless treasure from a reality-bending madman, or die trying.
10. Down Among the Dead Men (2022)
Daniel Faust’s last heist ended with a betrayal, a bullet in his heart, and a plunge from a lonely back-country bridge. Now he’s on life support, and the occult relic keeping him tethered to this world is counting down the last seconds to midnight.
That’s the good news. The bad news is, he just woke up in hell!
Marooned, lost, and hunted in an endless city of the damned, Daniel is racing against time. He’ll be trapped in the netherworld forever if he can’t return to his body before the clock runs out. A host of enemies stand in his way. Some are desperate to silence him. Others, ghosts etched in blood and gun-smoke, are hungry for payback.
And in the land of the living, Daniel’s family and crew gather to mount a desperate defense around his hospital bed as assassins close in from all sides.
11. Dig Two Graves (2024)
Daniel Faust is back from hell and out for blood. He has a new face and a deadly mission: to find the tiger-queen Naavarasi and his own traitorous brother and put them both six feet underground.
But when Naavarasi’s shape-shifting minions abduct one of Daniel’s own, it’s time for a desperate rescue. With his demonic lover Caitlin and his precocious apprentice Melanie, he follows a thread of nonexistent airlines, ghostly packages, and urban legends to Springfield, a small town with big secrets.
A small town where everything closes at sundown and people are warned not to go out after dark. A small town where the library offers books written by authors who never existed, and the locals seem to be acting out parts assigned by an invisible director.
There’s only one way into Springfield. There’s no easy way out. And as the fabric of reality begins to warp and change around them, Daniel and company will have to learn a new set of rules to survive and end Naavarasi’s twisted design.
This is a rescue mission, but there’s more at stake than a single life. The consequences are cosmic. He’s gunning for a pair of heads tonight, but Daniel Faust may have to drop enough bodies to fill a graveyard before his work is done.
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