Book Series · 5 Books

Story Thieves Books

In order from Story Thieves to Worlds Apart.

James Riley's complete five-book middle-grade adventure follows children who can enter fictional worlds—and must deal with what happens when stories, characters, and reality stop staying in their proper places.

Reviewed by the Bookroo Editors Updated August 11, 2026

Reading order

How to Read the Story Thieves Books

Read all five books in numbered order. Pick the Plot uses choose-your-path mechanics, but it remains required book four, and Worlds Apart resolves the continuing crisis that follows it.

Secret Origins takes place around comic-book characters, but it is a prose novel rather than a graphic adaptation or side series.

Sources: Simon & Schuster's official series inventory.

For parents

What Parents Should Know

The tone is humorous and inventive, but the children face villains, mind control, erased memories and identities, drowning danger, dinosaurs, imprisonment, threats of being split in two, and possible destruction of whole realities. The action is generally non-graphic.

Where to start

Where Should My Child Start?

Start with Story Thieves

The mystery and character relationships carry across all five books, so this series works best from book one.

Where the story begins

First Book in the Series

Sale price

$858

Book #1 · Chapter Book · Ages 8–12 · 2015

Story Thieves

By James Riley

Owen's world flips when he discovers Bethany can leap from books. Can they find her father without unraveling reality?

383 pages· 71,193 words· Est. 10 hour read

$8.99Save 5%

Paperback

Summary: Owen's mundane life takes a thrilling turn when he witnesses Bethany, a half-fictional classmate, emerge from a library book. Bethany's quest to find her missing fictional father leads them into the pages of Owen's favorite series, Kiel Gnomenfoot. But their adventure risks exposing Bethany's secret and unraveling the story's fabric. Can they navigate this literary world without causing chaos, or will they be trapped in a final, perilous chapter?

In reading order