The Lost Stories

The Lost Stories is a collection of nine short stories set across the Ranger’s Apprentice timeline, from the earliest days of the Ranger Corps to well after the main series ends. It was framed in the preface as a set of “lost manuscripts” recovered by an archaeologist — an in-world conceit the series doesn’t otherwise use, and one that lets the book sit comfortably outside the main chronology.

The contents of the US Philomel edition are:

1. Death of a Hero
2. The Inkwell and the Dagger
3. The Roamers
4. Purple Prose
5. Dinner for Five
6. The Bridal Dance
7. The Hibernian
8. The Wolf
9. And About Time Too…

The Hibernian is the Halt-and-Crowley origin story — how they met, what they were running from, and how they built the reformed Ranger Corps that Will is eventually apprenticed into. The Inkwell and the Dagger sits inside the timeline of The Icebound Land and follows Gilan.

Published as book 11 of the main series, The Lost Stories works as a single read or can be broken up and slotted into chronology — see the main Ranger’s Apprentice reading-order page for one way to split it.