Lists about Nero Wolfe's world:

Click the link above to view:

  • list of he stories with a link from each story title to a synopsis, the location(s), victim(s), murderer(s), motive(s), weapon(s), client(s), & fee
  • lists of major and minor characters with details
  • timeline of stories
  • And more Lists:
    • NW Arrests
    • NW Foods
    • NW Orchids
    • NW Victims & Weapons
    • NW Murderers
    • NW Places & Things (with photos)

Prolific Author

Rex Stout led a long, productive and multi-faceted life with a wide variety of careers.

From about 1912 until his death in 1975 he wrote a great many stories, articles, essays, book reviews, and social and political material besides the many Wolfe novels and novellas. Use the links below to access the sub-sections that attempt to chronicle his sporadic non-Nero Wolfe writing careers from about 1912 until his death in 1975.

Rex Stout's prolific output is not always grasped because he is identified of as the author of the Nero Wolfe series, without due regard for his other writings. Here is the tally, and it does not include his writings for various social and political causes, book reviews written for The New York Times and others, etc.

There are MANY free files for your reading enjoyment and slide shows of the cover art from his many writings on these pages:

In addition to fiction writing, Mr. Stout spent a great deal of his time verbally championing a wide variety of political causes. But that's a different section: https://www.nerowolfe.org/htm/stout/activism_overview.htm. The entire Rex Stout section has many, many interviews and writings by Stout for your reading pleasure.

Publication Categories/Quantities

1912 – 1918—Pulp fiction [READING COPIES OF MANY OF THE SHORT STORIES ARE AVAILABLE ON THIS SITE.]
 Some stories may be lost because they were published in "pulp" magazines long ago. Those that have been located in archives have been published in book form: 9 to date.

  • Novels = 6
  • Short Stories = 41
  • TOTAL = 47

1929 – 1941

  • Non-Nero Wolfe novels (serious fiction & mystery stories) = 14
  • Non-Nero Wolfe stories & articles = about 5
    [READING COPIES OF MANY OF THESE STORIES ARE AVAILABLE ON THIS SITE.]
  • Edited anthologies and compilations = 16
  • TOTAL = 35

1934 – 1975—Novels (33) & Novellas (39 novellas)*

  • (Nero Wolfe books [novels and novella collections (2-3 novellas in one book, usually also printed in magazines)] = 48)
  • TOTAL NERO WOLFE STORIES = 72

1910 – 1975  TOTAL = 154

* There is an additional novella published only posthumously in Death Times Three entitled Assault on a Brownstone. It is an early version of Counterfeit for Murder which was published in magazine and book format (Saturday Evening Post and Homicide Trinity, respectively). Assault on a Brownstone is not counted in the number of novellas above.

The novella, Frame Up for Murder, was published only in magazine format until its inclusion in Death Time Three. It is a longer version with marked plot differences of Murder is No Joke. Frame Up for Murder is not counted in the number of novellas.

Bitter End, another novella published only in magazine format until after Mr. Stout's death, and then in Corsage, is a reworking of his Tecumseh Fox novel Bad for Business, and is included in the tally of 39 novellas.

Where to Buy the Books

The Wolfe Pack does not sell books directly, although we do receive a small percentage of any Amazon purchase you make using the links on this site (see the link in the column to the right).

  1. Use the Alphabetic or Chronological list of the Wolfe Books to make sure you don't miss any of the 48 Wolfe stories.
  2. Not all the books are still in print, so you can buy some new, but will need to buy some used. Bantam reprinted 10 of the titles, two-per-book (five books). They are also keeping many of the previous printing available for purchase new as well as all of the books (usually) are available in Kindle & Nook format.
  3. Barnes & Noble bookstores in Manhattan usually stock a minimum of 20 Wolfe titles, including all the newest reprints.  If possible, try to buy from local stores to keep them in  business.
  4. Used books can be in quite good condition -- or not.  They are usually reasonably priced. However, a recent attempt to locate a replacement copy of Too Many Women determined that because it has not been reprinted for many, many years (evil sexist plot device?), used copies of even the paperbacks are quite expensive.
  5. If you hold out for hardbound copies you will pay a good deal of money and have to accumulate them more slowly -- hardbound copies were only printed the first couple of years after the original publication date. Beware of Book Club editions: they are fine for reading but have a very low resale value and poorer quality paper than trade editions. Compared to original hardbound publications, they easily turn brown and eventually dry out altogether.
  6. If you use the link on our web site to Amazon (directly under the menus on the left side of every page), the Wolfe Pack receives a small percentage of the sale price that helps pay for our web site hosting costs.
  7. Anthology printings are a great way to obtain between 3 and 7 stories in one volume. Because they are hardbound, the paper and binding is usually better than paperback printings. See the anthologies page fora listing of their contents.

OTHER SOURCES OF BOOKS
(AND DON'T FORGET TO TRY THE INDIES FIRST!):

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  • Winnifred Louis contributed her entire pioneering site "Merely a Genius" to this site and that included many of the reviews and quotations now on the updated corpus covers pages.
  • Contributors to www.goodreads.com provided some reviews
  • Peter Darrel compiled the magazine publication listing of the Nero Wolfe saga. 
  • Jesse Strater assembled the Alternate Titles list.
  • Dan Augustine compiled a similar listing that we used to update these listings.
  • Michael Bishop compiled the ORCHIDUS COMPLETUS with index and illustrations of all orchids mentioned in the corpus.
  • Those indefatigable Wolfeans at Wikipedia have compiled incredibly well-document research on all aspects of The Corpus.
  • Project Seven (http://www.projectseven.com/) for invaluable web design tools that greatly contributed to the speedier development of and upgrades to this site.

Thanks Winnifred, Dan, Michael, Peter, Jesse, and to the dozens and dozens of cover art contributors. I'm sorry it took so long to organize all those JPGs.