Stephen Markley Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Stephen Markley is a contemporary, mystery, and memoir author, who is also a well-known journalist and screenwriter.

He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and published the humorous travelogue and memoir “Tales of Iceland” about his experiences in Iceland.

Markley was brought up in Mount Vernon, Ohio, and through much of his youth, he loved pursuing literary ambiguities.

He used to pen all manner of scribbled stories in thick notebooks and while he was at Miami University of Ohio doing his undergraduate degree, he used to write for his school newspaper too.
Over the years, his work has appeared in The Rumpus, Paste Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, Slate, The Week, The Iowa Review, the Chicago Reader, and Chicago’s RedEye.

He is also the author of “The Great Dysmorphia,” the e-reader short about how he ingested hallucinogenic mushrooms while attending the Republican Presidential Debate in 2012.

After working for several years as a freelancer and barely making ends meet, Stephen Markley applied to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Just like every aspiring writer, he had heard of the workshop and believed that there was something in the water at Iowa that could turn his fortunes around.

When he first arrived in Iowa, he had several chapters of both “The Deluge” and “Ohio” in her traveling bag. He would ultimately sell his debut novel “Ohio,” which would be called a devastating, angry, and wild masterpiece by National Public Radio.
He sold the novel about three years after he moved to LA to try to make something of himself as a screenwriter. The novel became such a great hit that it was optioned for a movie by HBO.

It was at this time that he was approached by Dan Fogelman, the TV producer, who wanted to know if he was interested in working on “Only Murders in the Building,” the comedy series.

Even though this was not in his wheelhouse, he embraced his experience as he had the opportunity to collaborate with so many witty people and continued to write up to the second season.

Stephen Markley does much of his writing from his home whether he is drafting a novel or a television script. He loves to work from his hand-me-down desk and typically juggles several projects at once.
He usually seeks moments of reverie without any distractions or smartphones, so that he can give voice to the many characters in his mind.

Markley has said that just like any other author, he had the perennial fear of rejection but that will not stop him from creating characters, who can explore the essential and existential questions he has been interested in since he was a child.
Some of these include Why do we matter? Why does this planet matter? and why does our love matter?

“Tales of Iceland” by Stephen Markley is a work in which he goes deep into Icelandic culture and history, even as he also tells the weird stories that have to be in the best travelogues.
There is partying on National Day in Reykjavik, a road trip around the Golden Circle, drinking with gorgeous Icelandic women late in the night, meeting a raging and drunk Kiefer Sutherland, and hiking over pristine white glaciers that were in some of the best scenes in “Game of Thrones.”

It is a very spicy story about everything in Iceland that comes with a little foul language. Markley also injects his signature combative social conscience and twisted sense of humor, as he explains how Iceland is devoid of prostitutes.
He also explains how the doomsday that Iceland experienced came from the fishing quotas that were planted decades earlier, and why it is unwise to invite Icelandic citizens to an after-party.
This work is required reading and an indispensable travelogue for anyone interested in visiting this remarkable, beautiful, and strange country.

“Ohio” is Stephen Markley’s brilliant debut novel in which four former high school friends head back to their hometown in Ohio to make amends.

The four friends are Bill Ashcraft, Tina Ross, Dan Eaton, and Stacey Moore.

Bill drove into town to deliver a package while Stacey is a Ph.D. candidate that finds herself sucked into the mire of the disappearance of her former love.
Dan is a veteran who came back from Afghanistan with emotional wounds and a prosthetic eyeball while Tina is forced to confront the violence of her past.

Canaan is a town that once upon a time was at the center of the steel mill industry. But it has now been destroyed by opiates and an economic downturn.

All over is a sense of disillusionment and the four friends feel rudderless as they compare what they have achieved next to the blinding lights of adolescent dreams.
Over the course of a night filled with flashbacks from high school, they uncover some dark secrets and settle old scores.

The long-buried truth that everyone believed was just a legend begins to crystalize as it offers a window into how the lives of the residents and the heart of the town were molded.

It is at the same time a gorgeous and disturbing work that offers a broad view of the anxieties of a post 9/11 America and the complexities of the people who had to navigate them.

Stephen Markley’s novel “The Deluge” is a brilliant dystopian epic set over about three decades from the 2010s to 2040. It features a range of characters trying to fight climate change with varying levels of success sometimes at great personal risk.
There is Tony Pietrus the geologist, sophistivated eco-terrorist Sahne Acosta, Kate Morris the climate justice activist, and chief of staff for the Climate Crisis Senate Select Committee, Ashir al Hasan.
It all starts in familiar terrain with scientists warning that we do not have time.

The lead in the novel is Morris, who belongs to “A Fierce Value Fire,” an organization that is all about global warming as the driver of its political support.

On his part, he is a charismatic man who is always coming up with investment opportunities to benefit poverty-stricken and neglected regions.

Interstitial segments include an AI-written newspaper article about the bombing of a power station in Ohio in 2030, making for a great air of frightening plausibility.

In the meantime, Al Hasan known for his bureaucratic ways comments on the profiteering and inanity of the legislative process in a memo.

The work is a distrubing tour de force with some very nuanced characters who react very differently to existential threats.