Joel C. Rosenberg - Books Reading Order (2024)

Joel C. Rosenberg is a political thriller author who wrote bestselling books like The Last Jihad, The Last Days, The Ezekiel Option, The Auschwitz Escape, and many others, selling over 1.5 million copies so far. He also writes faith-based fiction books, and many of his thrillers have a biblical slant to them. In addition, he also wrote two non-fiction books focusing on his vision of the biblical prophecies combined with current events.

Here are the Joel C. Rosenberg books in order for his several thriller series.

New Joel C. Rosenberg Books

The Last JihadSeries

1. The Last Jihad, 2002
2. The Last Days, 2003
3. The Ezekiel Option, 2005
4. The Copper Scroll, 2006
5. Dead Heat, 2007

The Twelfth Imam/David Shirazi

Series

1. The Twelfth Imam, 2010
2. The Tehran Initiative, 2011
3. Damascus Countdown, 2013

J. B. Collins Series

1. The Third Target, 2015
2. The First Hostage, 2015
3. Without Warning, 2017

Marcus Ryker Series

• The Kremlin Conspiracy, 2018
• The Persian Gamble, 2019
• The Jerusalem Assassin, 2020

Other Joel C. Rosenberg Books

• Epicenter, 2006, nonfiction
• Inside the Revolution, 2009, nonfiction
• The Auschwitz Escape, 2014

Joel C. Rosenberg Biography

The author Joel C. Rosenberg was born in 1967, in Rochester, New York. His father was of Jewish origin, and his mother came from a Methodist family in England. Initially, his parents were agnostic, but in 1973, when Joel was only 6 years old, his parents became born-again Christians. It took Joel another 11 years until at the age of 17 he also became a born-again Christian.

Joel wanted to write books from the early age of 8, when he became interested in writing stories and screenplays, a passion that remained with him ever since.

He attended Syracuse University from where he graduated in 1988. Next, he started working as a research assistant for worked forRush Limbaugh, where he remained until he moved to work as a campaign advisor for U.S. Presidential candidateSteve Forbes.

As he was strongly interested in politics and “making things up”, he started his own political consultancy business, which he kept until 2000. During this time, he worked for several Middle Eastern political personalities, including former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A lot of Middle Eastern information in his political thriller novels supposedly comes from his time working with these politicians.

In 1999, after Benjamin Netanyahu lost the elections, Joel C. Rosenberg decided to leave the political arena and turn his attention to writing books. He always loved to tell stories and “make things up,” so rather than becoming a journalist, he decides to write instead books. The Last Jihad was the author’s debut novel, published in 2002. It also became the first in the same-titled series which includes five books and deals with terrorism and the Bible prophecy entwined.

The Last Jihad became an instant bestseller, featuring for several weeks on the New York Times, theUSA TodayandPublishers Weekly bestseller list. In fact, this book has a special meaning in the US, as the author began writing it in January 2001, just 11 months before the horrible terrorist attack on September 11. The story basically starts with the readers finding themselves in the co*ckpit of a plane that’s been hijacked by radical Islamist terrorists and it’s coming in on a kamikaze attack into an American city.

An interesting departer from the author’s genre is The Auschwitz Escape, a historical mystery set around WWII. To research the story for that book, Joel Rosenberg traveled to Poland to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp the Nazis were so fond of back in the day. He also traveled to Israel, where he met with WWII scholars at the ad Vashem Holocaust Memorial research center.

While the story itself is fiction, it does draw inspiration from two main real-life events: the escape of four prisoners from Auschwitz to warn Churchill about the camp and the horrors within, and the second, set in France, the story of a group of Evangelical Protestant pastors in Le Chambon sur Lignon, where the townsfolks saved some 5000 people that were fleeing from the Nazis. After writing the book, Joel C. Rosenberg traveled to France and visited the small town that the story is inspired by.

Most of the Joel C. Rosenberg books deal with worst possible case scenarios that could happen but hopefully won’t. People depicted are not only radical Islamists but extreme radical ones, called Apocalyptic Islamists, who want the world as we know it to end. Russian nationalists, North Korean terrorists, and Nazis are also depicted in his books. In fact, many readers know the author as one who writes stories that rip tomorrow’s political headlines. He was at times called “a modern-day Nostradamus” due to his keen ability to predict future events.

Many of his novels clearly show the author’s in-depth knowledge about the Middle East and the various political situations in the area. The books are all political thrillers somehow involving Middle Eastern countries in one way or another.

In addition to writing books, Joel C. Rosenberg has also founded and is the president of The Joshua Fund, a non-profit charity set to help Israel and neighboring countries.

Praise for Joel C. Rosenberg

Absolutely blown away by how good this guy is. . . . Simply masterful. (Sean Parnell)

An uncanny talent for focusing his storytelling on real-world hot spots just as they are heating up. (Porter Goss, former CIA Director)

A full-throttle and frightening ride through tomorrow’s headlines. (A.J. Tata)

Rosenberg has ripped a page from current headlines with a heart-stopping plot about the Islamic State. (Publishes Weekly)

Damascus Countdown is fantastic – intense action, blistering pace, and eerie how close it is to real events in the Mideast, espeically with Iran so close to the Bomb and Syria melting down! Rosenberg always keeps me riveted. (Rush Limbaugh)

Damascus Countdown will be the most chilling, pulse-pounding thriller you read this year. Joel is a great writer and spot on, he paints an eerie, terrifying, page-turning picture of a worst-case scenario coming to pass. You have to read this book, and then pray it never happens (Rick Santorum)

Joel Rosenberg is unsurpassed as the writer of fiction thrillers, they have a ring of truth that eerily echoes the news headlines. Sometimes I have to remind myself to breathe as I read one of his novels, because I find myself holding my breath in suspense as I turn the pages. (Anne Graham Lotz)

References

• Joel C. Rosenberg author website
• Author’s personal blog on political issues
• Cspan author video appearances

Books Reading Order » Thriller Authors » Joel C. Rosenberg