Jeff Somers

Author Information
Jeff Somers's Latest Book

Newest Release

  • Bibliography:
    41 Books (2 Series)
  • First Book:
    March 2001
  • Latest Book:
    November 2023
  • Author Rating:
  • Share:

Full Series List in Order

Avery Cates

1 - The Electric Church (Oct-2007)
2 - The Digital Plague (May-2008)
3 - The Eternal Prison (Aug-2009)
4 - The Terminal State (Aug-2010)
5 - The Final Evolution (Jul-2011)

Ustari Cycle

1 - Trickster (Mar-2013)
1.5 - Fixer (Jul-2014)
2 - We Are Not Good People (Oct-2014)

Book List in Order: 41 titles

  • Lifers

    Lifers is the story of three twentysomething guys who transitioned from collegiate underachieving to corporate bottom feeding and sketch out a plan to make a grab for some dignity. They will rob the publishing house that employs their only stable mem...

  • The Electric Church

    Avery Cates - 1

    In the near future, the only thing growing faster than the criminal population is the Electric Church, a new religion founded by a mysterious man named Dennis Squalor. The Church preaches that life is too brief to contemplate the mysteries of the uni...

  • The Digital Plague

    Avery Cates - 2

    Avery Cates is a very rich man. He's probably the richest criminal in New York City. But right now, Avery Cates is pissed. Because everyone around him has just started to die - in a particularly gruesome way.With every moment bringing the human race ...

  • The Eternal Prison

    Avery Cates - 3

    I KNEW THE MECHANICS OF DEATH -- AND I WAS CAUGHT IN ITS GEARS Avery Cates is a wanted man. After surviving the worst bioengineered disaster in history, Cates finds himself incarcerated - in Chengara Penitentiary. As Chengara has a survival rate of ...

  • Sift, Almost Invisible, Through

    in Crimes by Moonlight

    An all-new mystery anthology edited and featuring a new story by #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris Nighttime is the perfect time for the perfect crime. #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris edits and contributes...

  • The Terminal State

    Avery Cates - 4

    Avery Cates is an army man. Between the army's new dental plan and a set of first class augments, he's been given a second chance - albeit a quick one. When a corrupt officer decides to make some money on the side by selling new recruits, Cates fi...

  • The Final Evolution

    Avery Cates - 5

    The world is dying. With avatars replacing humans and the birth rate non-existent, the human race is almost extinct. In the end, it comes down to Canny Orel; Avery's long sought after nemesis -- transformed now into something other than human. Ore...

  • Trickster

    Ustari Cycle - 1

    Jeff Somers returns with a darkly original urban fantasy series featuring a cadre of mages operating just under the radar of human society. Magic uses blood -- a lot of it. The more that’s used, the more powerful the effect, so mages find “vol...

  • Up the Crazy

    Jeff Somers' novels Lifers (2001, Creative Arts Book Co.) and Chum (2013, Tyrus Books; chumthenovel.com) share a universe and characters. This story is a "deleted chapter" from Lifers that offers some background into the world of the ho...



  • Chum

    Mary and Bickerman are the center of their circle of friends--but these friends are strangers as well as family to them. In the course of year, under the influence of a stressful wedding and a whole lot of alcohol, relationships and nerves are twiste...

  • The Inner Swine Summer 2013

    THE INNER SWINE Volume 19, Issue 1/2 (Summer 2013) IN THIS ISSUE: Sic transit gloria mundi and all that jazz: Nothing’s forever. Except this zine, which no one reads any more, and yet here it is!EDITORIAL: Good RiddanceCOMMENTARY: All These Places ...

  • Fixer

    Ustari Cycle - 1.5

    Learn the Words. Get the blood. Rule the world. A stand-alone short story in the Ustari Cycle.The heroes of We Are Not Good People learn what “down and out” truly feels like when a massive debt forces one of them into the role of Fixer... in New ...

  • The Ruiner

    Every Wedding Has a Ruiner. Thomas Massery has always had a way...with the ladies, with a good bottle of booze, and with a sarcastic quip. Attending a wedding along with three ex-wives is bad enough. Being seated with them gets his dander up. When he...

  • We Are Not Good People

    Ustari Cycle - 2

    A gritty supernatural thriller featuring a pair of unlikely heroes caught up in the underground world of blood magic. The ethics in a world of blood are gray -- and an underground strata of blood magicians has been engineering disasters for centur...

  • The Inner Swine Volume 20, Issue 3/4, Winter 2014

  • The Shattered Gears

    Avery Cates is a bad man. Wandering the ruins of The System, he thinks he's done fighting, done killing -- but the world hasn't quite ended yet. When Cates is trapped in an old System prison, he encounters evidence that he's still a person of interes...

  • The Walled City

    Continuing Avery Cates' story from "The Shattered Gears," "The Walled City" sees the aging Gunner tangle with a psionic who has set himself up as a City Lord in the crumbling remnants of civilization. Coming to Kindle, Kobo, Google Play, and Nook Jun...

  • The Pale

    Continuing from The Shattered Gears and The Walled City, Avery tries to put distance between himself and The Angels and meets an old man with an unusual companion named The Pale. When they accompany Avery thinking he'll provide them protection on the...

  • The Iron Island

    The fourth episode of the exciting new Avery Cates adventure finds Avery en route to the mysterious Iron Island, where he will finally learn why he's on everybody's To Do List, and forge some surprising new alliances....



  • The Bey

    Cates returns to dry land on the hunt for The Pale and his possessions, and finds himself hunted in turn by the Archangel's psionic lieutenant known as The Bey. Cates has to think fast, move faster, and adapt to a world in steep decline....

  • The City Lord

  • The Stringer

    Learn the Words. Get the blood. Rule the world. A stand-alone short story in the Ustari Cycle.Most people never learn what a Stringer is -- and their lives are better for it. Lem, however, gets to learn about them and possession by alien intelligence...

  • Last Best Day

    The second in a trilogy of three shorts from the “exhilarating…powerful and entertaining” (The Guardian) contemporary fantasy writer Jeff Somers, featuring the blood magician duo from the inventive and darkly comic We Are Not Good People.Buddie...

  • The Boom Bands

    Learn the Words. Get the blood. Rule the world. A stand-alone short story in the Ustari Cycle -- the gritty supernatural series that includes We Are Not Good People from the "exhilarating, powerful, and entertaining" (Guardian) storyteller of the Ave...

  • The Kendish Hit

    In this thrilling prequel to The Electric Church, a young Avery Cates finds himself trying desperately to survive in the newly-established System of Federated Nations. When a hit on a Joint Council Undersecretary falls into his lap, Cates determines ...

  • The Drum Trial

  • The New World

    In this sequel to THE SHATTERED GEARS, Avery Cates is finding life as a City Lord not what it's cracked up to be, and is almost relieved when the woman he stole the city from, Lucinda Barowel, returns with a proposal. Partnering with a former Joint C...

  • The Devil's Bargain

    Avery Cates has a problem.In a shrinking, sterile world, the Archangel is marching his army to Castelvecchio, and Cates has the information he needs to access the last remnants of the awesome technology of the despise System. He's made his Devil's Ba...

  • The Long Siege

    Avery Cates is a City Lord, but the world's still ending. When he comes across a key piece of information, he hatches a bold plan to reboot the world - but the Archangel's army is camped outside, and they're coming in one way or another. Part Three o...



  • The Dark Hunt

  • Idolator

    Lem Vonnegan and Pitr Mags are Tricksters, minor magicians who only use their own blood to cast spells. When they're forced to assist in a bizarre murder investigation involving a strange magical relic, things get bloody....

  • The Bleeder

    In the world of blood magic, Bleeders are often treated as livestock -- as sources for sacrificial blood. When he makes the desperate decision to join a risky magical heist, Lem Vonnegan's refusal to bleed anyone but himself for his spells causes ten...

  • Magic is Violence

    If you enjoyed WE ARE NOT GOOD PEOPLE, THE STRINGER, THE BOOM BANDS, or LAST BEST DAY, here are three short stories set in the USTARI CYCLE universe!In IDOLATOR, Lem Vonnegan and Pitr Mags chase after a dangerous artifact that could do irreparable da...

  • The Red Line

    Lem Vonnegan and Pitr Mags try to help a desperate Bleeder and Lem is pushed to the limits of his magical ethics. For the first time in his life, he considers crossing his red line against casting spells off of other people's blood....

  • The Black Wave

    Avery Cates is heading back to The Iron Island to steal what might be the last operational hover in what was once The System, but his rag-tag army is starting to fray -- and there are more System leftovers out there than he knows. And most of them ar...

  • The Last Mile

    A crashing hover, a team of people he can't trust, another group of people who want him dead -- a typical post-apocalyptic day for Avery Cates. Recovering from disaster, Cates finds himself marooned on a tiny island. Cochtopa is no closer, but ere's ...

  • The Ghost Fleet

    Avery Cates and his shrinking number of allies have made it to Cochtopa, the secret installation crammed with enough high-tech murder to trade blows with the ArchAngel -- but Cochtopa's AI security is a digital imprint of none other than Dick Marin, ...

  • The Machines of War

    Contains four previously published novellas: The Black Wave, The Last Mile, The Ghost Fleet, and The Salted Earth.Having fled Castelvecchio and the Archangel's forces, Avery Cates and crew have only one move left: To somehow locate and gain access to...

  • The Salted Earth

    Avery Cates is in charge of Cochtopa, the last bastion of System technology and military might left in the world. But with his allies down to three people and a ghostly voice in his head, it may not be enough to stop the Archangel from forcing suicid...



  • The Burning City

    • / Science Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    The sequel to THE SHATTERED GEARS containing the previously published novellas THE NEW WORLD, THE DEVIL'S BARGAIN, THE LONG SIEGE, and THE DARK HUNT.Avery Cates has his city, but being a City Lord isn't what he thought it would be. Beset by problems,...

  • The Sewer Rat

    • / Science Fiction
    • Buy

    A free Avery Cates short story set after the events of The Shattered Gears Omnibus. Cates is in control of the walled city of Castelvecchio, but that doesn't mean he's safe. Alone in his new office, pondering this latest unexpected twist in his life,...

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Jeff Somers has published 41 books.

Jeff Somers does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, The Machines of War, was published in November 2023.

The first book by Jeff Somers, Lifers, was published in March 2001.

Yes. Jeff Somers has 2 series.
Author Series
Top Authors in Post-Apocalyptic
No ads, please...

$20 / year

FictionDB Premium Membership

Subscribe