Reading Order
Darwin Lacroix Books in Order
Start with Roman Ice. Ten novels, written in the order they happen, plus three optional novellas. Here is the full sequence and where each one fits.
The Darwin Lacroix novels in order
The ten novels, in the order they were written and the order they happen.
Roman Ice
Buried scrolls. Cutthroat rivals. A discovery that rewrites history. Iceland, a diamond cache, a family name to clear, and a maze of lava tubes under the glaciers. Start here.
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Lost Library
Ancient wonder. A seductive rival. A discovery to die for. The trail to the lost Library of Alexandria begins in Rome. (Previously published as Hypatia’s Diary.)
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Templar’s Bank
A Paris icon in flames. A conspiracy in the Church. A codex stolen from the Pontiff’s private vault points to the Knights Templar treasure.
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Sinai Deceit
A dark family secret. A bizarre cult. A talisman that can destroy entire cities. Corsica to California to Zurich to the remote heights of Mount Moses.
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Genesis Plague
The horror is real. Stolen relics, a doomsday group, and the world’s deadliest disease brought back on purpose.
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Signal Code
Some languages shouldn’t be spoken. Neolithic carvings in Antarctica, matching symbols in central France and Tibet, and a transmission pulsing beneath the ice.
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Tahitian Vault
A shallow World War II grave on Bora Bora gives up a handful of Japanese gold coins, and the island’s peaceful facade shatters.
Get the BookEvery novel is ebook-exclusive to Amazon and enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. Print and audio editions are separate from that.
Do I need to read the Darwin Lacroix books in order?
No, but it is the better read. Each novel resolves its own discovery and its own threat, so most of them work on their own if you have picked one up out of sequence. Reading in order gives you the relationships in the order they were built, and one continuous arc runs across Tuscan Hoax, Louvre Escape and Celtic Omen (Books 4, 7 and 8) that reads best in sequence.
If you are starting the series today, start at Book 1. Roman Ice is where Darwin, Eyrún and Zac meet, and everything after it assumes you were down in the lava tubes with them.
Where do the novellas fit?
Three novellas sit alongside the numbered series, and all three are optional. Corsican Gold and Vulcan Legacy both read before Roman Ice. Alexander’s Gold reads after Templar’s Bank (Book 3).
Corsican Gold
Corsican Gold is the prequel to the Darwin Lacroix Adventure series, set in Darwin’s contemporary timeline before the events of Roman Ice. A Corsair’s map, a cave, a filmmaker named Chloe Fox-Parker, and a treasure hunter who has been tracking the same prize.
Read Corsican Gold. $2.99, and in Kindle Unlimited.
Vulcan Legacy
Vulcan Legacy dramatizes the ancient origin of the treasure Darwin later hunts in Roman Ice: Herculaneum, 54 CE, Agrippa and Nero. Its final chapter moves to the present day, where a young Darwin, still a student on a dig, finds the codex and coins that start the whole quest.
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Alexander’s Gold
Alexander’s Gold is a standalone adventure that reads after Templar’s Bank (Book 3). A coin cache left by Alexander the Great surfaces at the State Museum of Azerbaijan, and the trail runs into the Nagorno-Karabakh wilderness with Zac Johnson and curator Leyla Ibrahimova.
Read Alexander’s Gold. $2.99, and in Kindle Unlimited.
The Zac Johnson thrillers are a separate series
The Zac Johnson thrillers are Dave Bartell’s second series and are not part of the Darwin Lacroix reading order. SPEAR Ops is the covert unit at their center. Zac Johnson appears in both, which is the only link between them. There is no shared storyline to catch up on and no required order between the two series.
Containment is the Zac Johnson origin novella, available on Amazon and free to read in Kindle Unlimited. Read Containment.
Threshold State, the first Zac Johnson novel, is available to pre-order now and releases 1 November 2026. Pre-order Threshold State.
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New to the series?
If you have never read a Darwin Lacroix book, Roman Ice is the one to open. A scroll recovered from beneath Vesuvius, a diamond cache surfacing in Iceland, and a Roman treasure convoy that academia spent decades laughing at.
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