Publication Order of Travis McGee Books
| The Deep Blue Good-By | 1964 |
| Nightmare in Pink | 1964 |
| A Purple Place for Dying | 1964 |
| The Quick Red Fox | 1964 |
| A Deadly Shade of Gold | 1965 |
| Bright Orange for the Shroud | 1965 |
| Darker Than Amber | 1966 |
| One Fearful Yellow Eye | 1966 |
| Pale Gray for Guilt | 1968 |
| The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper | 1968 |
| Dress Her in Indigo | 1969 |
| The Long Lavender Look | 1970 |
| A Tan and Sandy Silence | 1971 |
| The Scarlet Ruse | 1973 |
| The Turquoise Lament | 1973 |
| The Dreadful Lemon Sky | 1975 |
| The Empty Copper Sea | 1978 |
| The Green Ripper | 1979 |
| Free Fall in Crimson | 1981 |
| Cinnamon Skin | 1982 |
| The Lonely Silver Rain | 1985 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| The Brass Cupcake | 1950 |
| Murder for the Bride | 1951 |
| Judge Me Not | 1951 |
| Weep for Me | 1951 |
| Wine of the Dreamers / Planet of the Dreamers | 1951 |
| The Damned | 1952 |
| Ballroom of the Skies | 1952 |
| Dead Low Tide | 1953 |
| The Neon Jungle | 1953 |
| Cancel All Our Vows | 1953 |
| All These Condemned | 1954 |
| Area of Suspicion | 1954 |
| Contrary Pleasure | 1954 |
| A Bullet for Cinderella / On the Make | 1955 |
| Cry Hard, Cry Fast | 1955 |
| April Evil | 1956 |
| Murder in the Wind / Hurricane | 1956 |
| You Live Once / You Kill Me | 1956 |
| Death Trap | 1957 |
| The Price of Murder | 1957 |
| The Empty Trap | 1957 |
| A Man of Affairs | 1957 |
| The Executioners / Cape Fear | 1957 |
| The Deceivers | 1958 |
| Clemmie | 1958 |
| Soft Touch | 1958 |
| Deadly Welcome | 1959 |
| The Beach Girls | 1959 |
| The Crossroads | 1959 |
| Please Write for Details | 1959 |
| Slam the Big Door | 1960 |
| The End of the Night | 1960 |
| The Only Girl in the Game | 1960 |
| Where Is Janice Gantry? | 1961 |
| One Monday We Killed Them All | 1961 |
| A Key to the Suite | 1962 |
| The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything | 1962 |
| A Flash of Green | 1962 |
| I Could Go On Singing | 1963 |
| On the Run | 1963 |
| The Drowner | 1963 |
| The Last One Left | 1967 |
| Condominium | 1977 |
| One More Sunday | 1984 |
| Barrier Island | 1986 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| Border Town Girl / Five Star Fugitive | 1956 |
| End of the Tiger and Other Stories | 1966 |
| S*E*V*E*N | 1971 |
| Other Times, Other Worlds | 1978 |
| The Good Old Stuff | 1982 |
| Two | 1983 |
| More Good Old Stuff | 1984 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| The House Guests | 1965 |
| No Deadly Drug | 1968 |
| Nothing Can Go Wrong (With: John H. Kilpack) | 1981 |
| A Friendship: The Letters of Dan Rowan and John D. MacDonald 1967-1974 | 1986 |
| Reading for Survival | 1987 |
| Dear Dordo: The World War II Letters of Dorothy and John D. MacDonald | 2022 |
About John D. MacDonald
John D. MacDonald (1916 to 1986) was an American crime and suspense novelist, best known for the 21 Travis McGee novels and for “The Executioners”, which was filmed twice as “Cape Fear”. Many of his books are set in Florida, his adopted home, and he sold an estimated 70 million copies.
John Dann MacDonald was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, and moved with his family to Utica, New York, in 1926. He left the Wharton School in his second year, graduated from Syracuse University in 1938 and took an MBA at Harvard in 1939. He joined the US Army in 1940, served with the Office of Strategic Services in the China-Burma-India theatre and was discharged in 1945 as a lieutenant colonel. His business training shows in his fiction, where plots often turn on shady financial or property deals.
After leaving the army he spent four months writing short stories for fourteen hours a day, and he went on to sell nearly 500 of them to mystery and adventure magazines. His first novel, “The Brass Cupcake”, appeared in 1950. More than forty standalone crime thrillers and domestic dramas followed, most of them paperback originals, along with three science fiction novels that include “The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything”. He moved his family to Florida in 1951 and eventually settled in Sarasota.
Travis McGee first appeared in “The Deep Blue Good-By” in 1964. McGee calls himself a salvage consultant: he recovers stolen property for a fee of half its value, and he lives on a houseboat, the Busted Flush, moored at Bahia Mar in Fort Lauderdale. He narrates the books himself, each has a colour in its title, and many feature his friend Meyer, an economist who helps him pick apart swindles. The series ended with “The Lonely Silver Rain” in 1985.
“Cape Fear” was filmed in 1962 with Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum and remade by Martin Scorsese in 1991 with Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte, and a television series based on the novel reached Apple TV in 2026. Rod Taylor played McGee in the 1970 film of “Darker Than Amber”, and Sam Elliott took the part in a 1983 television film. The Mystery Writers of America named MacDonald a Grand Master in 1972. He died in Milwaukee on 28 December 1986 after complications of heart bypass surgery.