The Inheritance Games Books in Order

About the series

Jennifer Lynn Barnes is a New York Times bestselling author and psychology professor whose Inheritance Games universe launched in 2020 and exploded into one of the biggest YA phenomena of the decade. The series follows Avery Grambs, a teenager who inexplicably inherits a billion-dollar fortune from the reclusive Tobias Hawthorne — with the catch that she must live in his mansion with his four impossibly compelling (and suspicious) grandsons. Barnes masterfully blends locked-room mystery, family secrets, and slow-burn romance into compulsively readable puzzles.

Recommended reading order

The core Inheritance Games trilogy (The Inheritance Games, The Hawthorne Legacy, The Final Gambit) must be read in order — each book ends on a cliffhanger that feeds directly into the next. The Brothers Hawthorne (2023) and Games Untold (2024) are companion novels focusing on the Hawthorne brothers and can be read after the trilogy; The Same Backward as Forward (2025) continues the extended universe. The Grandest Game series (The Grandest Game, Glorious Rivals, The Gilded Blade) is a spin-off set in the same world and is best started after finishing the original trilogy.