Just another day at the office.
A horror/fantasy/mystery series of novels, fourteen and counting plus associated short stories and comic miniseries and the like, by
Jim Butcher. Harry Dresden is a
wizard and private detective operating out of modern day
Chicago, and reluctantly hired by a special police task force as a consultant on supernatural crimes. A cross between urban gothic fantasy and
Film Noir, the
Genre Savvy main character cracks jokes about the various tropes it uses. Adapted into a
drama series on the Sci Fi Channel. There's also a
tabletop RPG, which is much more faithful to the books, as it's
written from the characters' perspective.
Harry meets a wide variety of characters in the series, including Karrin Murphy, the
Action Girl cop who's
aware of the city's supernatural underworld; Bob,
a spirit of intellect who lives in a skull — human-shaped ghost in the television series — is Harry's literal
Magical Computer; Michael Carpenter, a modern-day
paladin wielding a
holy sword; Billy the
Werewolf and his pack of Alphas (a group of young
heroic wannabes); Thomas Raith, the
Loveable Rogue incubus White Court vampire; Harry's on-and-off love interest Susan Rodriguez; and Molly Carpenter, Michael's oldest daughter and Harry's
apprentice. Like many detective stories, Harry meets a ridiculous number of
femmes fatales,
crime bosses, and
hired goons, which is frequently
lampshaded in the series.
There are currently 14 novels in the series:
- Storm Front (2000)
- Fool Moon (2001)
- Grave Peril (2001)
- Summer Knight (2002)
- Death Masks (2003)
- Blood Rites (2004)
- Dead Beat (2006)
- Proven Guilty (2007)
- White Night (2007)
- Small Favor (2008)
- Turn Coat (2009)
- Changes (2010)
- Ghost Story (2011)
- Cold Days (2012)
- Skin Game (TBD)
Novels 1 - 9 have been collected in 4 different omnibus editions
Additionally, there are 14 short stories published in various collections:
- "Restoration of Faith"
- "Publicity and Advertising"
- "Something Borrowed" (published in My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding)
- "It's My Birthday, Too" (published in Many Bloody Returns)
- "Heorot" (published in My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon)
- "Day Off" (published in Blood Lite)
- "Last Call" (published in Strange Brew)
- "AAAA Wizardry" (published in the Our World RPG Book)
- "Even Hand" (published in Dark and Stormy Knights)
- "Love Hurts" (published in Songs of Love and Death)
- "Curses" (published in The Naked City)
- "I Was a Teenage Bigfoot" (Published in Blood Lite 3: Aftertaste)
- "Bigfoot on Campus" (Published in Hex Appeal)
- "B is for Bigfoot" (Published in Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron)
As well as 3 novellas:
- Backup (published by itself)
- "The Warrior" (published in Mean Streets)
- Aftermath (published in Side Jobs)
The short stories from "Restoration of Faith" to "Last Call" (as well as "Love Hurts") and all the novellas have been collected in an anthology called
Side Jobs released October, 2010. As for the rest, Butcher has
promised that all of the short stories and novellas would be available in collected form, so as he put it, he'll just have to write enough short stories to get another anthology.
Word Of God says that the series will have at least twenty books, which will then be capped off by an apocalyptic trilogy. Because, to quote the author,
"Who doesn't love apocalyptic trilogies?"In addition to the page links at the top, there is also a
shout out page. The recap
page is under major construction, so help with it would be appreciated.
Due to length, the trope list has been split off to subpages: