SeriesStack

The Enderverse Books in Order

by Orson Scott CardScience Fiction & Fantasy

16 books and 3 novellas from Earth Unaware (2012) to The Last Shadow (2021). Rated 4.6 across 177,314 listener reviews.

Reading order

  1. Earth Unaware

    Book 1 2012 4.6 (6k)

    A hundred years before Ender's Game, humans thought they were alone in the galaxy. Humanity was slowly making their way out from Earth to the planets and asteroids of the Solar System, exploring and mining and founding colonies.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  2. Earth Afire

    Book 2 2013 4.6 (5.7k)

    One hundred years before Ender's Game, the aliens arrived on Earth with fire and death. Earth Afire by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston is the story of the First Formic War. Victor Delgado beat the alien ship to Earth, but just barely.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  3. Earth Awakens

    Book 3 2014 4.7 (5.4k)

    The story of The First Formic War continues in Earth Awakens. Nearly 100 years before the events of Orson Scott Card's bestselling novel Ender's Game, humans were just beginning to step off Earth and out into the Solar System.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  4. The Swarm

    Book 4 2016 4.7 (4.9k)

    Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston return to their Ender's Game prequel series with this first volume of an all-new trilogy about the Second Formic War in The Swarm.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  5. First Meetings

    Novella 4.5 2002 4.4 (2.2k)

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  6. Pretty Boy

    Novella 4.75 2007 4.1 (447)

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  7. The Hive

    Book 5 2019 4.7 (2.8k)

    New York Times bestselling authors Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston return to the prequels to Ender's Game following The Swarm with The Hive, the second audiobook in the Second Formic War.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  8. Ender's Game

    Book 6 1985 4.6 (54.5k)

    From New York Times bestselling author Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game—adapted to film starring Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford—is the classic Hugo and Nebula award-winning science fiction novel of a young boy's recruitment into the midst…

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  9. A War of Gifts

    Novella 6.5 2006 4.3 (1.6k)

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  10. Ender's Shadow

    Book 7 1999 4.8 (13.9k)

    The novel that launched the bestselling Ender's Shadow series—available for the first time on unabridged cd The human race is at War with the "Buggers," an insect-like alien race.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  11. Shadow of the Hegemon

    Book 8 2001 4.5 (8.4k)

    The War is over, won by Ender Wiggin and his team of brilliant child-warriors. The enemy is destroyed, the human race is saved.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  12. Shadow Puppets

    Book 9 2002 4.5 (6.8k)

    Bestselling author Orson Scott Card brings to life a new chapter in the saga of Ender's Earth and The Shadow Series. Earth and its society have been changed irrevocably in the aftermath of Ender Wiggin's victory over the Formics.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  13. Shadow of the Giant

    Book 10 2000 4.6 (6.3k)

    The Ender Saga continues with Shadow of the Giant, which parallels the events of Ender's Game from a different character’s point of view. Bean's past was a battle just to survive.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  14. Ender in Exile

    Book 11 2008 4.5 (5.6k)

    Orson Scott Card returns to his best-selling series with a new Ender novel, Ender in Exile. At the close of Ender's Game, Andrew Wiggin – called Ender by everyone – is told that he can no longer live on Earth, and he realizes that this is…

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  15. Speaker for the Dead

    Book 12 1986 4.6 (22.4k)

    Speaker for the Dead, the second novel in Orson Scott Card's The Ender Saga, is the winner of the 1986 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1987 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  16. Xenocide

    Book 13 1991 4.4 (13.3k)

    In Lusitania, Ender found a world where humans and pequininos and the Hive Queen could all live together; where three very different intelligent species could find common ground at last.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  17. Children of the Mind

    Book 14 1996 4.4 (10.4k)

    The planet Lusitania is home to three sentient species: the Pequeninos, a large colony of humans, and the Hive Queen, who was brought there by Ender Wiggin.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  18. Shadows in Flight

    Book 15 2012 4.5 (4.8k)

    Ender's Shadow explores the stars in this all-new novel... At the end of Shadow of the Giant, Bean flees to the stars with three of his children--the three who share the engineered genes that gave him both hyper-intelligence and a short,…

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  19. The Last Shadow

    Book 16 2021 4.1 (1.8k)

    Orson Scott Card's The Last Shadow is the long-awaited conclusion to both the original Ender series and the Ender's Shadow series, as the children of Ender and Bean solve the great problem of the Ender Universe—the deadly virus they call…

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

Collections and companions

About this reading order

Books are listed in the series' own numbering, which for The Enderverse is also the best order to read them in. Novellas and short stories sit between the novels they follow, numbered the way the publisher numbers them (4.5 comes after book 4). They are optional — you can skip them without missing the main story. Years are first publication where we could confirm it, and otherwise the first audiobook release.

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