Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Heavy Laden | 1928 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 2 | Babes and Sucklings | 1929 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 3 | Gladiator | 1930 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 4 | Blondy’s Boy Friend | 1930 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 5 | Footprint of Cinderella | 1931 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 6 | The Murderer Invisible | 1931 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 7 | The Savage Gentleman | 1932 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 8 | Finnley Wren | 1934 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 9 | The Golden Hoard | 1934 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 10 | The Smiling Corpse | 1935 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 11 | Too Much of Everything | 1936 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 12 | The Shield of Silence | 1936 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 13 | An April Afternoon | 1938 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 14 | The Other Horseman | 1942 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 15 | Corpses at Indian Stones | 1943 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 16 | Night Unto Night | 1944 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 17 | Opus 21 | 1949 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 18 | The Disappearance | 1951 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 19 | The Smuggled Atom Bomb | 1951 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 20 | As They Reveled | 1951 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 21 | Three To Be Read | 1951 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 22 | Tomorrow! | 1954 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 23 | Experiment in Crime | 1956 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 24 | The Innocent Ambassadors | 1957 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 25 | Danger Mansion | 1960 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 26 | Triumph | 1963 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 27 | They Both Were Naked | 1963 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 28 | Autumn Romance | 1965 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 29 | The Spy Who Spoke Porpoise | 1969 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 30 | Los Angeles: A.D. 2017 | 1971 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
| 31 | The End of the Dream | 1973 | Philip Wylie | Buy |
Philip Wylie’s standalone novels cover an extraordinary range of subjects and styles over more than four decades. Gladiator (1930) tells the story of a man born with superhuman strength, predating Superman by several years and often cited as an influence on the comic book character. The Disappearance (1951) imagines all men and all women suddenly inhabiting separate versions of Earth, examining gender relations through a science fiction premise.
His nuclear war novels, Tomorrow! (1954) and Triumph (1963), were written during the Cold War and deal directly with the consequences of atomic warfare on American cities and their inhabitants. Between these genre works, Wylie also published literary novels, mysteries, and satires. The sheer variety of his output means there’s no single “typical” Wylie novel, but readers who enjoy mid-century American fiction with big ideas will find plenty to explore.