Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | fallingoverstandingstill | 2013 | John Jantunen | Buy |
| 2 | Cipher | 2014 | John Jantunen | Buy |
| 3 | A Desolate Splendor | 2016 | John Jantunen | Buy |
| 4 | Savage Gerry | 2021 | John Jantunen | Buy |
| 5 | Mason’s Jar | 2023 | John Jantunen | Buy |
John Jantunen’s standalone novels include his debut fallingoverstandingstill (2013), Cipher (2014), A Desolate Splendor (2016), Savage Gerry (2021), and Mason’s Jar (2023). The five books share Jantunen’s dark literary style.
Jantunen sets his fiction in rural and small-town Ontario, where violence and poverty exist alongside natural beauty. A Desolate Splendor (2016) is a post-apocalyptic story grounded in that landscape, while Savage Gerry (2021) explores cycles of crime within a community. His prose tends toward dense, literary writing that rewards patient readers.
His debut, fallingoverstandingstill, uses a deliberately unconventional title that signals the experimental bent of his early work. Cipher (2014) followed quickly, and then Jantunen settled into a pace of roughly one book every few years. Mason’s Jar (2023) is his most recent novel and continues his interest in characters shaped by hard circumstances.