Slow Burn books in order

Reading order

Slow Burn opens on the morning a virus tears through an unprepared world, following Zach, an ordinary man who finds himself immune to the disease but still very much at risk from everyone and everything around him. His reluctant partnership with Murphy gives the series much of its character tension, since the two men make poor allies but worse enemies. The early books move fast and stay close to the ground level of the collapse.

As the series progresses through Dead Fire, Torrent, and Bleed, the scope widens and the stakes grow heavier. Adair does not let his characters off easily, and the accumulation of loss across the series gives the later entries genuine weight. City of Stin and Grind in particular push into bleaker territory, building toward the eventual confrontation in Sanctum. Firestorm, published five years after Sanctum, brought the story to its conclusion for readers who had followed from the beginning.

The series holds up well for fans of character-focused zombie fiction who prefer their apocalypse stories grounded and relentless rather than action-movie smooth. Read in order starting with Zero Day.