Author Guide · Crime Fiction
Books Written by
Jane Harper worked as a newspaper journalist for thirteen years, in County Durham, Hull, Geelong and Melbourne, before she published a word of fiction. Her first novel, The Dry, set in a Victorian farming town in the middle of a drought, won the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript while it was still unsold. Since then it has sold more than a million copies, and her books have sold more than 3.5 million in 40 territories. Each one is set in a particular piece of Australian country — bushland, outback, a Tasmanian coast, a wine valley, a dying mining town — and the place shapes the crime. This guide covers her six key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 6 key books · 2016–2025 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Jane Harper has published six novels: three Aaron Falk mysteries, The Dry (2016), Force of Nature (2017) and Exiles (2022), and three standalones, The Lost Man (2018), The Survivors (2020) and Last One Out (2025). Start with The Dry, which won the CWA Gold Dagger. Below: the Falk series order, the films and the Netflix series.
Where to Start with Jane Harper
If you want the book that made her name
→ The Dry (2016) — the first Aaron Falk case.
If you want a standalone in the outback
→ The Lost Man (2018) — three brothers and a death at a stockman’s grave.
If you want the end of the Falk series
→ Exiles (2022) — read the other two Falk books first.
If you want her newest book
→ Last One Out (2025) — a missing son and a town that is emptying out.
6 Jane Harper Books, in Order
The Dry
Aaron Falk, a federal police investigator in financial crime, returns to Kiewarra, the drought-stricken farming town in Victoria he left as a teenager, for the funeral of his childhood friend Luke Hadler, who appears to have killed his wife and son and then himself. Staying on to look into the deaths, Falk runs into the town’s old suspicion of him over the death of a girl twenty years earlier. The novel won the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award as an unpublished manuscript and the 2017 Australian Book Industry Award for Book of the Year. The film adaptation, with Eric Bana as Falk, was released in 2021.
Force of Nature
Five women from a Melbourne accounting firm go into the Giralang Ranges on a corporate team-building hike; four come out. The missing woman, Alice Russell, had been secretly helping Falk and his partner Carmen Cooper with an investigation into the firm. The story moves between the search and the women’s days in the bush. It won the Polar de Cognac prize for best international thriller, and was filmed as Force of Nature: The Dry 2 (2024), again with Eric Bana.
The Lost Man
Two brothers, Nathan and Bub Bright, meet at the border of their neighbouring cattle properties in outback Queensland, where their middle brother Cameron has been found dead beside a lonely grave known as the stockman’s grave, in heat no one survives long without shelter. The investigation turns into a portrait of a family and the isolation of the land. It won the Ned Kelly Award for best fiction and was shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year.
The Survivors
Kieran Elliott returns to Evelyn Bay, the Tasmanian coastal town where his mistake during a storm years earlier cost two lives. When a young woman is found dead on the beach during his visit, the old guilt and the new crime start to overlap. It was shortlisted for general fiction book of the year at the 2021 Australian Book Industry Awards, and became a six-part Netflix series in 2025.
Exiles
Falk travels to a wine-growing valley in South Australia for the christening of his friend Greg Raco’s son, a year after a young mother, Kim Gillespie, vanished from a busy wine festival and left her baby asleep in a pram. It is the third and final Falk novel, and it closes his story as much as it solves a case. It was shortlisted for best crime fiction at the 2023 Ned Kelly Awards.
Last One Out
Five years after her son Sam disappeared on his 21st birthday, the doctor Ro Crowley returns, as she does every year, to Carralon Ridge, a village in rural New South Wales that a mining company has nearly emptied. Going through Sam’s notes for an oral history of the town, she begins to think his uncle’s death was not suicide and that the two cases are connected. It went to No. 1 in Australia on publication in October 2025 and was published in the US and UK in 2026.
In What Order to Read Jane Harper
Only three books form a series: the Aaron Falk novels, The Dry, Force of Nature and Exiles. Read them in that order. Each has its own case, but Falk’s past in Kiewarra, his partnership with Carmen Cooper and his friendship with Greg Raco carry from one to the next, and Exiles is written as an ending.
The other three, The Lost Man, The Survivors and Last One Out, stand alone and can be read in any order, before, between or after the Falk books. Publication order simply follows her from the bush to the outback, Tasmania, South Australia and rural New South Wales.
A reading path
1. The Dry (2016)
2. The Lost Man (2018)
3. Force of Nature (2017)
4. Exiles (2022)
5. Last One Out (2025)
The years · 1980–2025
Quick facts about Jane Harper
- Known for
- Jane Harper is known for crime novels in which a remote Australian landscape, and the small community that lives in it, is as central to the mystery as the crime itself.
- 1980
- Born in Manchester, England
- 1988
- Moves to Melbourne with her family, aged eight
- 2008
- Returns to Australia as a reporter in Geelong
- 2016
- The Dry
- 2025
- Last One Out
- Born
- 1980, Manchester, England; moved to Australia aged eight and became an Australian citizen in Boronia, Melbourne
- Education
- English and history, University of Kent
- Journalism
- Thirteen years: Darlington & Stockton Times, Hull Daily Mail, Geelong Advertiser, Herald Sun
- Breakthrough
- 2015 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript, The Dry
- Sales
- More than 3.5 million copies, published in 40 territories
- Screen
- The Dry (2021), Force of Nature: The Dry 2 (2024), The Survivors on Netflix (2025)
- Lives
- Bayside Melbourne
The red mark is 2016: The Dry, her first novel and the start of the Aaron Falk series.
How Jane Harper Writes: The Landscape as Suspect
Every Harper novel is fixed to a specific, isolated place, and the setting does part of the plotting. In The Dry a drought has wrecked the farms and the tempers in Kiewarra; in Force of Nature the bush separates five women from help; in The Lost Man the outback heat is what kills Cameron Bright, whoever left him there; in Last One Out a mining company is emptying the town the mystery depends on.
Her books run on two timelines. A present-day investigation is set against an older event the community has never settled: a girl’s death twenty years before in The Dry, a storm in The Survivors, a disappearance a year earlier in Exiles, five years earlier in Last One Out. Her detectives are rarely in charge of the case. Falk is a financial investigator working off his own patch, and the standalones are led by family members rather than police.
The prose is plain and economical, which reviewers often link to her years as a news reporter. The interest is less in forensic procedure than in how people in a small community protect and suspect one another, and the solutions usually come from the past rather than from a twist.
Watch
Jane Harper discusses Exiles
Jane Harper talks with Barbara Peters of The Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona, about Exiles, the final Aaron Falk novel.
Frequently asked questions about Jane Harper’s books
How many books has Jane Harper written?
Six novels: The Dry (2016), Force of Nature (2017), The Lost Man (2018), The Survivors (2020), Exiles (2022) and Last One Out (2025). Three are Aaron Falk mysteries and three are standalones.
What are Jane Harper’s books in order?
The Dry (2016), Force of Nature (2017), The Lost Man (2018), The Survivors (2020), Exiles (2022) and Last One Out (2025). These are the first Australian publication years; UK and US editions often appeared a year later.
What is the Aaron Falk series order?
Three books: The Dry (2016), Force of Nature (2017) and Exiles (2022). Read them in that order. The Lost Man and The Survivors, published between them, are not part of the series and do not feature Falk.
Is Exiles the last Aaron Falk book?
Yes. Exiles is the third and final Aaron Falk novel, and her book since then, Last One Out (2025), is a standalone.
Where should I start with Jane Harper?
With The Dry, her first novel and the first Aaron Falk book. If you would rather start with a standalone, The Lost Man needs no knowledge of the other books.
What is Jane Harper’s most famous book?
The Dry (2016). It won the CWA Gold Dagger and the Australian Book Industry Award for Book of the Year, has sold more than a million copies, and was filmed in 2021 with Eric Bana.
Which Jane Harper books have been adapted?
Three. The Dry became a film in 2021 and Force of Nature became Force of Nature: The Dry 2 in 2024, both with Eric Bana as Aaron Falk. The Survivors became a six-part Netflix series in 2025.
Is Jane Harper Australian or British?
Both. She was born in Manchester in 1980, moved to Melbourne with her family at eight and became an Australian citizen there, went back to England as a teenager and worked on British newspapers, then returned to Australia in 2008. She lives in Melbourne.
What awards has Jane Harper won?
The Dry won the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript, the CWA Gold Dagger and the 2017 Australian Book Industry Award for Book of the Year. Force of Nature won the Polar de Cognac, and The Lost Man won the Ned Kelly Award for best fiction.
What is Last One Out about?
A doctor, Ro Crowley, returns to Carralon Ridge, a nearly abandoned mining village in rural New South Wales, five years after her son Sam vanished on his 21st birthday, and begins to connect his disappearance to an earlier death in the town.
Footnotes
- Jane Harper — Wikipedia
- About Jane — janeharper.com.au
- Last One Out — Bookreporter
- Jane Harper — Bookreporter
- Jane Harper & Exiles — The Poisoned Pen Bookstore
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“It wasn’t as though the farm hadn’t seen death before, and the blowflies didn’t discriminate.”
— Jane Harper, The Dry (2016), the first line of her first novel
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