The Expanse Books in Order
James S.A. Corey is actually two people: Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who started The Expanse as a tabletop RPG campaign before turning it into novels. The first book, Leviathan Wakes, appeared in 2011. The ninth and final novel came out in 2021.
The setup is straightforward. Two hundred years from now, humanity has colonized the solar system. Earth is overpopulated. Mars is a military power building terraforming infrastructure. The Belt, the asteroid mining operations between them, suffers under exploitation from both. When an alien protomolecule appears, the balance of power shifts, eventually opening gates to over a thousand new solar systems.
The series follows Jim Holden and his crew on the Rocinante, a stolen Martian warship they use for freelance work. Holden broadcasts every conspiracy he discovers, whether or not that makes things better. Other viewpoint characters rotate through the books: a detective, a marine, politicians, refugees, revolutionaries. The scope expands with each novel.
Abraham handles prose while Franck manages plot and world-building. Their collaboration produced one of the most acclaimed science fiction series in decades. The Syfy and Amazon adaptation ran for six seasons and introduced the books to millions of new readers. It ended before the final three novels, which involve a thirty-year time jump and humanity's first interstellar war.