Giordano Bruno Series Reading Order: S.J. Parris Books Guide

The Giordano Bruno series by S.J. Parris turns one of the Renaissance’s most dangerous thinkers into a reluctant spy. Its hero is a real man: an Italian philosopher and runaway friar who reached Elizabethan England with the Inquisition behind him and ideas that could get him killed in any European country. In these novels, he earns his keep by hunting murderers and conspirators for the queen’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham.

There are seven novels and four novellas, and the order matters. This guide gives the publication order, the chronological order, where each novella fits, the history behind the fiction and what to read once you have finished.

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Quick Series Facts


Author	S.J. Parris (pen name of Stephanie Merritt)
Book count	7 novels and 4 novellas (3 of the novellas are also sold as one collection)
First book	Heresy (2010)
Latest novel	Alchemy (2023)
Latest novella	The Midwinter Martyr (2025)
Setting	The novels: England, Paris and Prague, 1583 to 1588. The novellas: Naples, Rome and Venice, 1566 to 1576
Genre	Historical mystery, historical spy thriller
Publisher	HarperCollins (UK)

Giordano Bruno Books in Publication Order

Publication order is the right order for the seven novels. They run forward in time from 1583 to 1588, and Bruno’s friendships, enmities, and standing with Walsingham carry over from book to book. The novellas are prequels and are covered in their own section below.

1. Heresy (2010)

Setting: Oxford, 1583

England is full of plots to kill Queen Elizabeth and restore the Catholic faith. Walsingham’s newest recruit is Giordano Bruno, a radical thinker on the run from the Inquisition, who is sent undercover to Oxford to expose a Catholic conspiracy. Bruno also has a private errand at the university, one he needs to keep hidden.

When a series of murders breaks open the closed world of one college, Bruno is drawn into the investigation. The book sets up everything the series runs on: an outsider narrator, a university town where the wrong book can hang a man, and a murder mystery tied to real politics.

Heresy was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association award for historical crime fiction, then called the Ellis Peters Historical Award, in 2010.

2. Prophecy (2011)

Setting: London, autumn 1583

It is the year of the Great Conjunction, when Jupiter and Saturn align, and London is full of talk of omens and the end of an age. Supporters of Mary Stuart are scheming against Elizabeth, and a young maid of honor is found murdered at court with occult symbols cut into her skin.

Walsingham sends Bruno to get inside the plot and bring back the evidence that will condemn the plotters. Bruno works alongside John Dee, the queen’s astrologer, in a book that moves the series from the university to the court and deep into Elizabethan astrology and magic.

3. Sacrilege (2012)

Setting: Canterbury, summer 1584

The Protestant leader William of Orange has been assassinated, and Elizabeth’s ministers fear she is next. In London, Bruno is approached by a woman he once loved, who is now fleeing a charge of murder.

He travels to Canterbury to find the real killer and, for Walsingham, to look into rumors of Catholic plotting in the cathedral city. What he finds is a conspiracy in the shadow of Thomas Becket’s shrine. Sacrilege was shortlisted for the CWA historical award in 2012.

4. Treachery (2014)

Setting: Plymouth, August 1585

Bruno travels to Plymouth with his friend Sir Philip Sidney, where Sir Francis Drake is preparing a fleet for an expedition against Spain. A death aboard Drake’s own ship holds the fleet in harbor, and Bruno is asked to find out what happened.

The investigation takes him through the rivalries of Drake’s officers and into the port’s underworld, where more than one plot is in motion. It is the series’ seafaring book, and it was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger in 2014.

5. Conspiracy (2016)

Setting: Paris, 1585

Bruno arrives in a city on the edge of catastrophe. King Henri III fears a coup by the Duke of Guise and the Catholic League, and Bruno, short of friends and money, turns to an old rival, the priest Paul Lefèvre, for help.

When Lefèvre is found murdered, Bruno is pulled into the politics of the French court, where the king’s mother, Catherine de Medici, runs her own network of informers. This is the first novel set entirely outside England, and the stakes extend to the royal houses of both France and England.

6. Execution (2020)

Setting: England, 1586

Bruno brings Walsingham news that a band of English Catholics intends to kill Queen Elizabeth and put Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne. Walsingham already knows. He is letting the plot run, hoping that Mary will put her approval in writing.

Bruno is sent undercover to join the conspirators and make sure they fail. The novel is built on the Babington Plot, one of the best-documented conspiracies of the reign, and it is the tensest and most political book of the seven.

7. Alchemy (2023)

Setting: Prague, 1588

The Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II has made his court a haven for scientists, astrologers, and alchemists. Bruno is sent to Prague to make contact with John Dee, and arrives to find the city unsettled by the murder of one of the emperor’s alchemists.

With an old enemy from the Inquisition also in the city, Bruno has to work out who gains from the killing in a court split by religion and ambition. Alchemy takes the series further from England than any other book in the series, and it is the latest full-length Bruno novel.

Upcoming and Announced Books

No eighth Giordano Bruno novel has been announced by the author or by HarperCollins. The series has not been declared finished either: a new Bruno novella appeared in 2025, two years after Alchemy.

For now, the new full-length novels from S.J. Parris belong to her second Elizabethan series, led by Sophia de Wolfe. Its second book, Rebel’s Gambit, has a HarperCollins publication date of May 6, 2027. Both Sophia de Wolfe books are covered in the More by S.J. Parris section below.

Chronological Order vs Publication Order

For the seven novels, there is no difference. Each one is set later than the one before, so the publication order is chronological.

The novellas are what change the picture. All four are set years before Heresy, during Bruno’s youth as a Dominican friar in Italy and his first years as a fugitive. A strict chronological read looks like this:

The Secret Dead (Naples, 1566)
The Academy of Secrets (1568)
A Christmas Requiem (Rome, 1569)
The Midwinter Martyr (Venice, 1576)
Heresy (Oxford, 1583)
Prophecy (London, autumn 1583)
Sacrilege (Canterbury, summer 1584)
Treachery (Plymouth, August 1585)
Conspiracy (Paris, 1585)
Execution (England, 1586)
Alchemy (Prague, 1588)

Our recommendation: read the novels first, in publication order, and treat the novellas as extras. Heresy was written as the introduction to Bruno, and it explains his past as much as a new reader needs. The prequels are more rewarding once you know the man the young friar becomes.

Companion Novellas and Short Stories

S.J. Parris has written four Bruno novellas. Three were gathered into one volume, and the fourth is sold separately.

The Secret Dead (2014)

Setting: Naples, summer 1566

Bruno is a novice at the Dominican monastery of San Domenico Maggiore when a girl’s body is found within its walls. He has a habit of asking awkward questions, and this time the answers could cost him his place in the order or put him in front of the Inquisition. It was the first of Bruno’s novellas, published as an ebook.

The Academy of Secrets (2020)

Setting: Italy, 1568

Bruno receives an invitation from a secret society of philosophers led by the eccentric Don Giambattista della Porta. He is captivated by the society and by della Porta’s niece. Keeping its heretical secrets soon becomes a matter of life and death.

A Christmas Requiem (2020)

Setting: Rome, 1569

Word has reached the pope of the young friar’s remarkable feats of memory, and Bruno is summoned to Rome. He suspects a trap. The Rome he finds is a city of intrigue, and getting out again will take luck as well as wit.

The Dead of Winter (2020)

This is the collected edition of the three novellas above: The Secret Dead, The Academy of Secrets, and A Christmas Requiem. HarperCollins published it in November 2020, the same year as Execution. If you want the early stories in print, this is the simplest way to get them, and there is no need to buy the three separately.

The Midwinter Martyr (2025)

Setting: Venice, 1576

Bruno is now on the run from the Inquisition, and Venice turns out to be no refuge. An aristocrat has been killed, and his wife and his secretary have been arrested for the murder. An anonymous coded letter insists that the woman is innocent, and Bruno is hired to find out who wrote it. This novella is not part of The Dead of Winter.

Do you need the novellas? No. The seven novels are complete without them. The novellas are short, self-contained mysteries that fill in Bruno’s Italian years, and they can be read at any point after Heresy.

About the Giordano Bruno Series

Series Overview

The series takes real life and writes into its gaps. The historical Bruno spent about two and a half years in England in the 1580s, living in the French ambassador’s household. What exactly he did there, beyond writing and arguing, has been debated by historians. S.J. Parris takes the theory that he passed information to Walsingham and builds a double life on it: philosopher by reputation, intelligence agent by necessity.

Each novel is a murder mystery set inside a real political crisis. Bruno narrates in the first person, and he is always the foreigner in the room: a heretic to Rome, a suspect Catholic to English Protestants, and a man with no patron he can fully rely on. That position allows the books to examine the religious conflict of the 1580s from outside both camps.

The supporting cast mixes invention with the historical record. Walsingham, Sir Philip Sidney, John Dee, Sir Francis Drake, Catherine de Medici, and Rudolf II all appear, alongside fictional students, servants, printers, and killers.

What Makes the Giordano Bruno Series Special

A real protagonist with a known fate. The historical Bruno was burned as a heretic in Rome in 1600. Readers who know that carry it through every book, and it gives the series a weight that an invented detective would not have.
A different setting every time. Oxford, the court in London, Canterbury, Plymouth, Paris, and Prague. No two novels share a location, so the series never settles into routine.
Mysteries tied to real crises. The plots against Elizabeth, the cult of Thomas Becket, Drake’s 1585 expedition, the French Wars of Religion, and the Babington Plot all supply the stakes.
An outsider’s view of Elizabethan England. Bruno is Italian, excommunicated, and poor. He sees English habits, English food, and English suspicion of foreigners with a sharp and often funny eye.
Ideas as a source of danger. Bruno’s interest in forbidden books, the art of memory, and a universe without limits is what makes him useful to his patrons and a target for his enemies.
Recognition from the crime writing world. Three of the first four novels were shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger: Heresy (2010), Sacrilege (2012), and Treachery (2014).

Where to Start

New Readers

Start with Heresy. It introduces Bruno, explains how he came to work for Walsingham, and establishes friendships that run through the later books. It also works as a complete mystery in its own right, so you will know by the end whether the series is for you.

If you enjoy it, carry straight on with Prophecy, which is set only a few months later. Readers who already like Tudor fiction will find more suggestions in our guide to the best Tudor historical fiction.

Can You Start Elsewhere?

Each novel has a self-contained mystery, so you can follow the plot of any single book. The cost is the continuing story: later novels refer to earlier events and to people Bruno has already met, and some of those references give away how earlier books turned out.

If you want a sample before committing, try a novella. The Secret Dead is short, set long before the novels, and gives nothing away about them.

If You Want…

A closed-circle mystery in a university: Heresy
Astrology, omens, and the royal court: Prophecy
Ships, sailors, and Sir Francis Drake: Treachery
The French court and the Wars of Religion: Conspiracy
A pure espionage plot: Execution, though it is best read in sequence
Alchemy and the court of Rudolf II: Alchemy

About the Author

S.J. Parris is the pen name of Stephanie Merritt, born in Surrey in 1974. She read English at Queens’ College, Cambridge, graduating in 1996, and was Deputy Literary Editor of The Observer from 1998 to 2005. She has also written for The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and the New Statesman.

Her publisher’s biography says she first became fascinated by Tudor England and Renaissance Europe as a Cambridge student while researching a paper on the period. The Bruno novels came later, after two contemporary novels and a memoir under her own name. HarperCollins states that the Bruno series has sold more than one million copies.

Her official website, sjparris.com, has pages for each book, along with interviews and articles. For her full bibliography under both names, see our S.J. Parris author guide.

More by S.J. Parris

The Sophia de Wolfe series. Sophia Underhill, a character from the Bruno novels, returns years later under the name Sophia de Wolfe in a separate Elizabethan series. The first book, Traitor’s Legacy (2025), is set in England in 1598. Elizabeth has still not named a successor, a young heiress is found murdered at a theatre, and the queen’s spymaster, Robert Cecil, calls on Sophia, a former agent, to investigate.

The second, Rebel’s Gambit, is set in 1601. The body of a Scottish envoy is pulled from the Thames, and Cecil again turns to Sophia as the Earl of Essex reaches for power. The series is written so that new readers can start with it, but it is set a decade after the Bruno novels and is best saved until you have read them.

As Stephanie Merritt. Her debut, Gaveston (2002), won a Betty Trask Award. More recently she has written two contemporary psychological thrillers under her own name, While You Sleep (2018) and Storm (2022). None of the three is historical crime.

Historical Context: Elizabethan England in the 1580s

The Real Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno was born in 1548 at Nola, near Naples. He entered the Dominican order as a teenager at San Domenico Maggiore in Naples and was ordained a priest in 1572. In the mid-1570s, with a heresy indictment being prepared against him, he fled and spent most of the rest of his life moving between European cities.

He was in England from April 1583 to October 1585, living at the French embassy in London as a guest of the ambassador, Michel de Castelnau. He lectured at Oxford, where he was mocked for supporting Copernicus and failed to win a post, and he befriended Sir Philip Sidney. He also published six philosophical dialogues in Italian while in London. He argued that the universe was infinite and that the stars were distant suns with worlds of their own.

Bruno returned to Paris with the ambassador in 1585, then moved on through Wittenberg, Prague, Helmstedt, and Frankfurt. He went back to Italy and was arrested in Venice in May 1592. After a trial in Rome that lasted seven years, he was burned alive in the Campo de’ Fiori on February 17, 1600. A statue of him has stood on the spot since 1889.

Walsingham and the Secret War

Sir Francis Walsingham was Elizabeth’s principal secretary from 1573 until his death in 1590, and he ran the network of agents, informers, and code-breakers that protected her. The 1580s were his busiest decade. The Throckmorton Plot was uncovered in 1583, and the Babington Plot in 1586, and Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed on February 8, 1587.

The danger was real. In 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth in the bull Regnans in Excelsis and released her subjects from their allegiance. From then on, the English state treated committed Catholics as possible traitors, and the line between private conscience and treason became very thin. That is the pressure every Bruno novel works under.

Two histories cover this world well. The Watchers by Stephen Alford is a history of Elizabethan espionage and the plots it was built to stop. The Queen’s Agent by John Cooper is a biography of Walsingham himself.

How Accurate Are the Novels?

The framework is sound. The dates, the crises, the public figures, and the atmosphere of suspicion come from the record, and Bruno’s movements in the first five novels broadly follow the real man’s: Oxford and London in 1583, England until 1585, then Paris. He really was in Prague in 1588, the year in which Alchemy is set.

The spying is the speculative part. The historian John Bossy argued that Bruno was the informant inside the French embassy who wrote to Walsingham under the name Henry Fagot. Other scholars dispute the identification, and it remains a theory. The murders Bruno solves are invented, and Execution is the clearest departure, since the real Bruno is not known to have returned to England after 1585.

For the man himself, Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic by Ingrid D. Rowland is a full biography. For the religious world, the Reformation swept away, which several of the novels’ Catholic characters are mourning; The Stripping of the Altars by Eamon Duffy is the standard account. Our Tudor England hub has more fiction set across the period, and we look at the wider question of what makes historical fiction accurate.

Similar Series You’ll Love

Shardlake by C.J. Sansom

The closest match, and the comparison the publisher itself makes. Matthew Shardlake is a lawyer in the England of Henry VIII, two generations before Bruno, who is sent to investigate deaths that powerful men would prefer to leave alone. Like Bruno, he is an outsider with a conscience in a country where religion is a matter of life and death.

There are seven novels, published from 2003 to 2018. Start with Dissolution and see our Shardlake reading order and C.J. Sansom author guide.

John Shakespeare by Rory Clements

If it is Walsingham’s secret service you want more of, this is the series. John Shakespeare, the playwright’s elder brother, is Walsingham’s chief intelligencer, and the books cover the same years and the same fears as the Bruno novels, from the point of view of an Englishman inside the system.

The first book is Martyr (2009), in which Shakespeare investigates the killing of a young noblewoman while a Spanish assassin is said to be hunting Sir Francis Drake. The second novel in the series won the CWA historical award in 2010, the year Heresy was on the shortlist.

Wolf Hall Trilogy by Hilary Mantel

For Tudor power politics without the murder mystery. Mantel follows Thomas Cromwell’s rise at the court of Henry VIII in three novels that are slower and more interior than anything in the Bruno series, and among the most admired historical fiction of this century. Wolf Hall (2009) won the Booker Prize.

Our Wolf Hall Trilogy reading order and Hilary Mantel author guide cover all three books.

Marcus Didius Falco by Lindsey Davis

A first-person investigator with a sharp tongue, working for an imperial government he does not entirely trust. Falco is an informer in the Rome of the emperor Vespasian, and his 20 novels are lighter in tone than the Bruno books but share their mix of mystery and well-researched daily life.

Begin with The Silver Pigs (1989). The Marcus Didius Falco reading order lists the full run, and there is more on the author in our Lindsey Davis guide.

Cicero Trilogy by Robert Harris

For readers who prefer the conspiracy to the corpse. Harris tells the life of the Roman orator Cicero through his secretary Tiro, in three novels about ambition, plots and the collapse of a political system. Imperium (2006) is the first.

See the Cicero Trilogy reading order and the Robert Harris author guide.

Blood & Sugar by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

A later century, the same kind of book. In June 1781, Captain Harry Corsham goes looking for a missing friend, an abolitionist, and is led to the slaving port of Deptford and a conspiracy that reaches into the British slave trade. Blood & Sugar (2019) won the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown and was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger.

Daughters of Night returns to the same Georgian London.

More Ideas

The ancestor of every novel about a learned churchman solving murders is The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (1980), set in an Italian abbey in 1327. It appears on our list of the best medieval historical fiction. For a gentler monastic detective, try the Brother Cadfael reading order.

If the Tudor court interests you more than the crime, the Plantagenet and Tudor series by Philippa Gregory and the Six Tudor Queens series by Alison Weir tell the dynasty’s story through its women. Our guide to the best historical mystery fiction ranges across every period.

Adaptations

There is no screen version of the Giordano Bruno series. Television rights were sold in 2016: The Bookseller reported that Urban Myth Films had acquired the novels, with a planned series titled Heresy. No production has reached the screen since.

Two other Tudor series have been filmed. Wolf Hall was adapted by the BBC in 2015, with Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell, and concluded with a second series in 2024. Shardlake, a four-part adaptation of Dissolution starring Arthur Hughes and Sean Bean, was released on Disney+ in May 2024 and was not renewed.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many books are in the Giordano Bruno series?

There are seven novels: Heresy, Prophecy, Sacrilege, Treachery, Conspiracy, Execution and Alchemy. There are also four prequel novellas: The Secret Dead, The Academy of Secrets, A Christmas Requiem and The Midwinter Martyr. The first three novellas are collected in one volume called The Dead of Winter.

What is the correct order to read the Giordano Bruno books?

Read the seven novels in publication order: Heresy, Prophecy, Sacrilege, Treachery, Conspiracy, Execution, Alchemy. Publication order is also chronological order for the novels, which run from 1583 to 1588. The novellas are prequels and can be read at any point after Heresy.

Do I need to read the Giordano Bruno series in order?

It is strongly recommended. Each novel has its own mystery, so a single book can be followed on its own, but friendships, rivalries and Bruno’s standing with Walsingham develop from book to book. Later novels also refer to how earlier ones ended.

What is the Giordano Bruno series about?

It follows Giordano Bruno, a real Italian philosopher and former Dominican friar who fled the Inquisition and came to England in 1583. In the novels he works as an agent for Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, and investigates murders connected to the plots against the queen. Later books take him to Paris and Prague.

Was Giordano Bruno a real person?

Yes. Giordano Bruno was born at Nola, near Naples, in 1548 and became a Dominican friar before fleeing Italy. He lived in England from 1583 to 1585 as a guest of the French ambassador, lectured at Oxford and published philosophical works in London. He was arrested in Venice in 1592 and burned as a heretic in Rome on February 17, 1600.

Was the real Giordano Bruno a spy?

Possibly. The historian John Bossy argued that Bruno was the informant in the French embassy who reported to Walsingham under the name Henry Fagot. Other historians dispute the identification, so it remains a theory. S.J. Parris takes it as the starting point for her fiction.

Is the Giordano Bruno series historically accurate?

The setting is accurate and the mysteries are invented. The political crises, the major public figures and the dates come from the historical record, and Bruno’s movements in the first five novels broadly match the real man’s. The murders he solves are fiction, and the novel Execution places him in England in 1586, a year in which the real Bruno is not known to have been there.

Where do the novellas fit in the reading order?

All four novellas are set before the first novel. The Secret Dead takes place in Naples in 1566, The Academy of Secrets in 1568, A Christmas Requiem in Rome in 1569 and The Midwinter Martyr in Venice in 1576. They are optional, and most readers will enjoy them more after reading Heresy.

What is The Dead of Winter?

The Dead of Winter is a collection published in 2020 that contains three Giordano Bruno novellas: The Secret Dead, The Academy of Secrets and A Christmas Requiem. It is not a new novel. The Midwinter Martyr, published in 2025, is a separate novella and is not included in the collection.

Will there be an eighth Giordano Bruno novel?

No eighth novel has been announced. Alchemy, published in 2023, is the latest full-length book, and a new novella, The Midwinter Martyr, followed in 2025. The most recent full-length novels by S.J. Parris belong to her Sophia de Wolfe series, so check the author’s website or her publisher for news.

Who is Sophia de Wolfe and how is she connected to Giordano Bruno?

Sophia de Wolfe is the lead character of a separate Elizabethan spy series by S.J. Parris. She appears in the Giordano Bruno novels under the name Sophia Underhill. Her own series begins with Traitor’s Legacy, set in 1598, and continues with Rebel’s Gambit, set in 1601.

How long does it take to read the Giordano Bruno series?

The seven books are full-length historical novels, so most readers should allow one to two weeks for each. At a steady pace of one novel every two weeks, the main series takes about three and a half months. The four novellas are much shorter and can each be read in an evening or two.

Is the Giordano Bruno series suitable for younger readers?

The series is written for adults. The books deal with murder, torture, executions and religious persecution, in keeping with the period, and there is some sexual content. Older teenagers who already read adult crime fiction or historical fiction should have no difficulty with them.

Are the Giordano Bruno books available as ebooks and audiobooks?

Yes. The novels are published in print, ebook and audiobook editions. The Midwinter Martyr and the other novellas are available as ebooks, and The Dead of Winter collects three of them in print.

Has the Giordano Bruno series been adapted for television?

No. Television rights to the novels were acquired by the production company Urban Myth Films in 2016, with a series planned under the title Heresy, but no adaptation has reached the screen.

Conclusion

The Giordano Bruno series is one of the strongest historical mystery series in recent years, and its strength lies in its choice of hero. Bruno is clever, proud, hard up, and far from home, and S.J. Parris uses his outsider’s eye to show Elizabethan England, Valois Paris, and Rudolf II’s Prague as places where a thought could be a crime.

The reading order is simple. Begin with Heresy, read the seven novels as they were published, and add the novellas whenever you want more of Bruno’s early life. The Dead of Winter is the easiest way to pick up three of them at once.

When you reach the end of Alchemy, the Sophia de Wolfe novels carry the same world into the last years of Elizabeth’s reign. After that, the Shardlake and John Shakespeare series are the natural next steps.