James Bond is a literary franchise comprising a series of novels and short stories, first published in 1953 by the British author Ian Fleming.

Fleming wrote twelve novels and two collections of short stories in the series, all at his Jamaican home Goldeneye and published annually.

Some of these have been novelisations of episodes in the series of James Bond films, produced by Eon Productions, while others were either continuation novels or short stories.

John Gardner was asked to continue the series by Ian Fleming Publications, the copyright holders to the franchise; he wrote fourteen novels and two novelisations between 1981 and 1996.

There was a hiatus of six years before Sebastian Faulks was commissioned to write a further Bond novel, which was released on 28 May 2008, the 100th anniversary of Ian Fleming's birth.

He started writing his book at his Jamaican home Goldeneye, typing out 2,000 words in the morning, directly from his own experiences and imagination;[2] he finished work on the manuscript in just over two months,[3] completing it on 18 March 1952.

[11] "Octopussy" Bond tracks down a World War II hero who had murdered his friend to steal a cache of Nazi gold.

[28] The stories were originally titled The Rough with the Smooth, although this was changed to For Your Eyes Only for publication, which included the subtitle Five Secret Occasions in the Life of James Bond.

[31] Independent scholar John Griswold constructed a "high-level chronology of James Bond's life", based on the logic of depicted events and actual periods referred to in the books.

[44] Griswold also deliberately discounts the chronological significance of actual historic events mentioned in the novels and stories, arguing that Fleming made such references for effect without synchronising them accurately to his fiction.

[50] Glidrose then commissioned Kingsley Amis, who, under the pseudonym of "Robert Markham", wrote Colonel Sun, which was published on 28 March 1968.

[60] James Harker, writing in The Guardian, considered that the Gardner books were "dogged by silliness",[60] giving examples of Scorpius, where much of the action is set in Chippenham, and Win, Lose or Die, where "Bond gets chummy with an unconvincing Maggie Thatcher".

[79] Benson also changed Bond's gun back to the Walther PPK,[80] put him behind the wheel of a Jaguar XK8[81] and made him swear more,[82] which led Black to note that there was an increased level of crudity lacking in either Fleming or Gardner.

"[83] The Peterborough Evening Telegraph agreed, stating that with Benson's 007, in keeping more with Fleming, "PC-ness goes out the window and it's a more ruthless Bond with bad habits.

[97] Faulks ignored the timeframe established by Gardner and Benson and instead reverted to that used by Fleming and Amis, basing his novel in the 1960s;[78] he also managed to use a number of the cultural touchstones of the sixties in the book.

[98] Faulks was said to be true to Bond's original character and background, providing "a Flemingesque hero"[78] who drove a battleship grey 1967 T-series Bentley.

[103] In February 2018, it was announced that a second Horowitz novel, again building upon unpublished Fleming and this time a prequel to Casino Royale, titled Forever and a Day would be published by Jonathan Cape on 31 May 2018.

[116] In October 2013 Ian Fleming Publications announced that Stephen Cole would continue the series, with the first edition scheduled to be released in Autumn 2014.

[119] Kim Sherwood was commissioned by the Ian Fleming estate to write a trilogy of novels set in the world of James Bond.