How To Read All The FNAF Books In Order (2024)

Reading the FNAF books in order provides a thorough and enjoyable accounting of every aspect and hidden detail of the literary companion pieces to the animatronic-themed horror franchise. FNAF, or Five Nights at Freddy's, has been delighting and terrifying fans since Scott Cawthon developed and published the first video game in 2014. A first-person horror video game, FNAF was a massive hit and has since produced a franchise that includes nine main series games, spin-off games, a feature-length FNAF movie starring Josh Hutcherson, and though some may be unaware, a substantial catalog of book adaptations.

Comprising 23 novels and novellas and nine graphic novels, the FNAF books series adds a much more in-depth look into the surprisingly complicated lore of Five Nights at Freddy's. Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes is the first book in the series, published in 2015, just a year after the first video game. Unlike other multimedia franchises, the books in FNAF are all written by the original creator, Scott Cawthon, who has worked with different illustrators and co-writers over the years. With three series and graphic novels to adapt them, the series' chronology can get a little cumbersome.

How To Read The Main FNAF Trilogy In Order

The Main Books Center On Charlie Emily

The main FNAF trilogy begins with The Silver Eyes, released in 2015, which was followed by FNAF: The Twisted Ones in 2017 and FNAF: The Fourth Closet in 2018. The novels take place in a separate continuity from the gamesbut the lore, many of the characters, and the tone are set within the same universe of the main series. Charlotte "Charlie" Emily, the daughter of Henry Emily, the co-founder of Fredbear's Family Diner and Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, is featured prominently along with the secret serial killer, William Afton.

10 years after a series of murders at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, Charlie reunites with old friends. Curiosity and the looming specter of Charlie's father, who took his own life years ago, leads her and her pals to return to the pizza shop. There, they realize the spirits that inhabited the animatronics a decade ago are far from asleep. The Silver Eyes is a retelling of the FNAF story, recontextualizing how the children died for their spirits to inhabit the animatronics. The book also includes the only major appearance of Golden Freddy.

The second novel takes place a year after the first and Charlie is once again dragged into a supernatural and dangerous plot involving William Afton and her father's animatronics, which sees her narrowly escaping death — or perhaps not. It isn't until the third book that the truth is revealed: Charlie is not a human, but an animatronic herself, built by her father out of grief after Afton killed her as a child. The Fourth Closet finds Charlie contending with this realization and having to stop the other versions of herself out to kill her for good.

The main FNAF trilogy brings a humanity and personality to the franchise. The four video games made up to the start of the novel are more concerned with thrills, point-and-click problem-solving, and uncovering nuggets of lore for players to build an outline of the story. It's the novels that introduce just who these characters from the games actually are. They put the fascinating and beloved details of the games into an easy-to-read story and any fan who wants an overview of what FNAF is about should dive into the books.

How To Read The Fazbear Frights Novella Series In Order

Each FNAF Novella Has Three Stories In This Series

The Fazbear Frights novella series consists of 12 novellas, each containing three short stories. Each story is loosely connected to one another though not in any way that makes it necessary to read them in any specific order. There are recurring characters, characters shared between the games and novellas, and plenty of new characters as well. It's a mystery series and serves mainly to fill in the many unanswered questions that linger in the FNAF universe.

Fazbear Frights #1: Into the Pit first came out in 2019, written by Scott Cawthon and Elley Cooper. Each subsequent novella has been written by Cawthon and a rotating cadre of authors, though Cooper has written the most. Andrea Waggener, Carly Anne West, and Kelly Parra have also co-authored some of the stories. Each novella has something exciting to offer readers and, because the three stories are not necessarily connected, if a reader does not like one tale, there are two more that they may prefer.

Fazbear Frights #4: Step Closer, released in July 2020, is an excellent novella to start with, as it has a mix of unnerving scares and genuine emotional moments in stories like Coming Home about two sisters desperate to reconnect. Each collection also includes a fourth tale called, Stitchwraith Stingers, a series of epilogues that follows a detective trying to uncover the mystery of the "Stitchwraith". These end tales connect all the books with an overarching plot that is even sometimes present in the short stories themselves.

How To Read The Tales From The Pizzaplex Series In Order

This Novella Series Takes Place In The FNAF Games' Continuity

The Tales from the Pizzaplex anthologies follow the Fazbear Frights style of having three independent short stories per book. Once again, this series is written by Cawthon and a handful of different writers, including Kelly Parra, Andrea Waggener, and Elley Cooper from the Fazbear books. The epilogue stories in this eight-book series, which first came out in 2002, are simply called Epilogue and tell the story of a terrible incident that occurred during the construction of Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex.

A significant difference between this series of anthologies and Fazbear Frights is that Tales from the Pizzaplex explicitly takes place within the video games' continuity, specifically Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach, the ninth main installment game in the franchise. While the stories tend to utilize characters from the game, there are plenty of new storylines and characters that make this a worthwhile anthology even for those well-versed in the video games' lore.

Tales from the Pizzaplex #2: HAPPS is one of the better collections in the series. It contains three stories (Help Wanted, HAPPS, and B-7) that all offer plenty of chilling scares and significant lore drops that make them feel much more connected to the overall series than any of the other FNAF anthologies.

How To Read The FNAF Graphic Novels In Order

The Graphic Novels Are Adaptations Of The Main FNAF Books With Something New To Offer

The FNAF graphic novels are all adaptations of books and anthologies. The entire main book trilogy has been adapted into graphic novels and there is one upcoming graphic novel adaptation of the Pizzaplex series called Tales from the Pizzaplex Graphic Novel 1, set to release in March 2025. This graphic novel pulls three stories from various anthologies: Under Construction, Happs, and Cleithrophobia.

There have been five graphic novel adaptations of Fazbear Frights, each titled Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights: Graphic Novel Collection #(various). Like the Pizzaplex graphic novels, Fazbear Frights takes stories from various anthologies in the series and are not one-to-one adaptations of the books. Once again, Scott Cawthon is the author, along with a team of writers and illustrators.

While the books are more extensive and give slightly more detail than the graphic novels, the design of the animatronic creatures and the unnerving, frightening setting are a major part of what makes the FNAF series so successful. The graphic novels combine Cawthon's imaginative worldbuilding with some truly impressive and frightening drawings that may be the best combination of the novels' storylines and the games' atmosphere.

Watch Five Nights At Freddy's on Amazon Prime Video

Five Nights at Freddy's

Five Nights at Freddy's is a multimedia horror franchise created by Scott Cawthon that began with the first entry in the video game series, Five Nights at Freddy's. The core story of the franchise focuses on a pizza franchise known as "Freddy Fazbear's Pizza," a kid-friendly entertainment center with animatronic hosts. The stores are closed when the animatronics begin to go berserk, slaying some of their guests. However, for most entries, a security guard is tasked with observing them at night, completely unaware of the horrible history behind the mysterious, murderous robots.

Created by

Scott Cawthon

First Film

Five Nights at Freddy's

Character(s)

Freddy Fazbear , Bonnie (FNAF) , Chica (FNAF) , Foxy (FNAF) , Springtrap (FNAF) , Balloon Boy (FNAF) , Mike Schmidt

Video Game(s)

Five Nights at Freddy's , Five Nights at Freddy's 2 , Five Nights at Freddy's 3 , Five Nights at Freddy's 4 , Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted , Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach , Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location , Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted 2