Steve Berry

Steve Berry is an American author of historical conspiracy thrillers, best known for the long-running Cotton Malone series, which follows a former U.S. Justice Department operative turned rare-book dealer in Copenhagen who is repeatedly drawn into international plots hinging on real historical mysteries and lost artifacts. Beginning with The Templar Legacy in 2006, the series blends fast-paced thriller plotting in the vein of Dan Brown with genuine historical research, each book typically built around a specific piece of documented history — the Knights Templar, Napoleon, the Romanovs, the Library of Alexandria — that Berry uses as the seed for a modern-day conspiracy.

A former trial lawyer, Berry brings a lawyer's attention to procedural and factual detail to his research, and each Cotton Malone novel includes a writer's note clarifying what in the book is historical fact versus invention. He has also co-founded History Matters, a nonprofit dedicated to historic preservation, reflecting the same interest in real history that drives his fiction. New readers should start with The Templar Legacy, since Cotton's personal life and recurring allies and antagonists develop across the series, though the historical mysteries at each book's core are self-contained. No film or television adaptation of the series has been produced to date, though Berry continues to publish new Cotton Malone novels and other standalone thrillers regularly.