LoreReads
Which FNaF books fill gaps in the games, and which stand apart
It began in 2014 as a small horror game about a night guard at a pizzeria whose animatronic mascots move after dark. Scott Cawthon kept adding games, and the story underneath them, told in phone calls, minigames and hidden tapes, grew into a long mystery about missing children and the company that keeps reopening its restaurants.
The books come in a few kinds. The novel trilogy that starts with The Silver Eyes is a reimagining with its own version of events. Fazbear Frights and Tales from the Pizzaplex are short story collections, each with an epilogue serial running through the books, and they sit closest to the games, though neither is confirmed as the games' continuity. The interactive novels are choose-your-path books set in places you'll know.
Start with the games. If you read one book, make it Bunny Call. If you want a novel, The Silver Eyes is the usual first pick.
Play the games in release order: the story was written that way, and later games answer earlier ones. The books slot in after the games they assume. The novel trilogy goes after Sister Location because The Fourth Closet borrows from it. Fazbear Frights waits until after Help Wanted, since Bunny Call assumes you know how Pizzeria Simulator ends; Oswald's game and gamebook follow the series. Tales from the Pizzaplex goes last, after Secret of the Mimic, because one of its stories gives away that game's mystery. The interactive novels are optional detours next to the games they borrow from.
You're Mike Schmidt, the new night guard at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, working midnight to 6 a.m. for five nights. Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy wander the building after closing, and all you have are security cameras, two doors, two lights and a power supply that runs down. A man on the phone leaves you messages each night about the job and its history.
Set before the first game at the original Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. You're the security guard, with five nights (or six) to survive Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy. It's an interactive novel: you make the choices, and there are dozens of endings and two difficulty settings.
The first game turned into a gamebook. It's built on Five Nights at Freddy's' own layout and rules, so you'll know every hallway and camera, and the fun is in seeing the familiar night play out as choices on the page. It doesn't add lore. Play the first game first; the book assumes you know how a night at Freddy's works and is better for it.
Jeremy Fitzgerald takes the night shift at a newer, brighter Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. There are no doors this time. You get a flashlight, an empty Freddy head to hide in and a music box you have to keep winding from the cameras, while the shiny new toy animatronics and the battered old ones from storage all come for the office.
Thirty years after Freddy Fazbear's Pizza closed, a horror attraction called Fazbear's Fright is built from what was left. You're the night guard before it opens. Only one animatronic is real, a rotting rabbit called Springtrap, and you keep him away by luring him with audio, sealing vents and rebooting failing systems while hallucinations of the old cast get in the way.
A small boy spends his nights alone in his bedroom while nightmare versions of the Freddy's animatronics creep toward the doors, the closet and the bed. There are no cameras: you listen for breathing and use a flashlight. Between nights, short pixel-art scenes show the boy's days in the 1980s, his older brother and the family's trips to Fredbear's Family Diner.
You start work as a technician at Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rental, an underground facility that stores animatronics built for children's parties. A computerized voice gives you your tasks each night: maintenance, shocks to keep the robots in line, crawling through vents. Circus Baby, Ballora, Funtime Freddy and Funtime Foxy are supposed to be safely switched off.
After Sister Location; the trilogy borrows from it
Ten years after a string of murders at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza tore apart the town of Hurricane, Utah, Charlie comes home for the anniversary. Her father owned the restaurant and built its four animatronic mascots. She meets up with her childhood friends, and curiosity leads them back to the old pizzeria, sealed up but still standing, and to the mascots inside it.
It's the first FNaF book and still the one most people start with. Read it as a reimagining, not as the answer to the games' mysteries: Charlie, her father Henry and the Hurricane pizzeria belong to their own version of the story. What you get is the games' core idea, children lost at a family restaurant and machines that remember, told with characters you can follow for a whole novel. The middle sags with teenage reunion scenes, but the nights inside Freddy's are tense. Save it until you've played up to Sister Location.
A year after the events at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, Charlie has started at a new school and is trying to move on, though she still has nightmares about a masked killer and four animatronics. Then bodies turn up near her school with wounds that look familiar, and she's pulled back into the world of her father's machines.
The one to skip if The Silver Eyes didn't grab you. It moves away from the pizzeria to a new town and a new kind of threat, and it pushes Charlie's own story somewhere the games never go. It's also the bridge to The Fourth Closet, which won't make sense without it. Read it straight after the first book.
John can't stop wondering what really happened to Charlie. Meanwhile a new animatronic pizzeria, Circus Baby's Pizza, is opening in Hurricane, and children have started going missing again. John reluctantly teams up with Jessica, Marla and Carlton to find the kids, and to learn the truth about Charlie and her father's creations.
The trilogy's ending, and the book that borrows most from the games: Circus Baby and her pizzeria come straight out of Sister Location, rebuilt to fit the novels' world. It answers the questions the first two books set up about Charlie, so it's worth finishing if you've come this far. It won't explain anything in the games themselves, and the plotting gets busy in the last third. Read the trilogy as one block after Sister Location.
It opens as a cheerful little pizza-making game, then turns into a business sim. You run your own Freddy Fazbear's Pizza: buy attractions and decorations by day, then sit in the office at night finishing paperwork while salvaged animatronics creep through the vents. Between days, you can salvage strange machines left in the back alley, if you're willing to risk it.
A single office and fifty animatronics from every game so far. You choose who's active and how aggressive each one is, then try to survive the night juggling doors, vents, heaters, fans and a music box. Beating set challenges unlocks short cutscenes, and the characters' voice lines drop hints about whose night this is.
A virtual reality collection that rebuilds nights from the first five games as minigames, plus repair jobs, vent crawls and dark rooms. In the story around it, Fazbear Entertainment has made the game to turn its haunted reputation into a joke. Hidden tapes left by one of its developers tell you something went wrong while they were making it.
After Help Wanted, once the classic games are done
Three novella-length stories about wishes. Oswald, facing a dull summer, finds that the ball pit at a run-down place called Jeff's Pizza can send him back to 1985, when it was a Freddy Fazbear's. Sarah wants to be beautiful. Millie wants to disappear. An epilogue introduces Detective Larson, who's handed a case about an urban legend called the Stitchwraith.
If you played the Into the Pit game, this is the story it came from, and it's shorter and nastier on the page. The other two stories aren't tied to the games, but the epilogue is the reason to start the series here: Larson's case runs through the next ten books and keeps pulling in names from Freddy's history. The prose is plain and quick, written for teens. Read this before any other Fazbear Frights book.
Three more stories about people trying to take control of their lives. Greg breaks into an abandoned pizzeria with his friends and finds Fetch, a robot dog he decides to test his theories on. Alec plots to expose his golden-child sister. Oscar, the grown-up of his house, takes something he knows he shouldn't. Larson's investigation continues in the epilogue.
The robot dog in the title story is one of the animatronics that exist only in the books, and he comes back in Larson's epilogue, so don't skip this volume if you're following that thread. Nothing here changes how you see the games. 'Out of Stock' is one of the stories the epilogue leans on, so pay attention to it.
Three stories about people left behind. Delilah, orphaned young and recently divorced, sinks deeper into her dreams every night. Stanley, newly dumped, works a dead-end job for a mysterious employer. Devon, abandoned by his dad and ignored by his mom, can't see why friendship comes so easily to everyone else. In the epilogue, Larson's case takes a turn.
A quieter volume. None of the three stories is tied to a game the way 'Into the Pit' is, so you're reading it for the setting's mood and for the epilogue, where the Stitchwraith thread starts to show its shape. Delilah's story matters to Larson's case later on. If you're reading the series for the games' history, skim the stories and read the epilogue properly.
After his parents' divorce, Pete takes his anger out on his little brother Chuck, and drags him into the back room of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza where an old Foxy still sits. Kasey, living on the streets, steals a pair of strange novelty glasses. Samantha and her older sister Susie try to stay close after a terrible loss. The epilogue follows Larson further in.
The first Fazbear Frights book with real weight for the games. 'Step Closer' is an older brother tormenting a younger one with Foxy, which will ring a bell after Five Nights at Freddy's 4. 'Coming Home' gives Susie, one of the children lost at Freddy's, a story of her own, told from a side the games only hint at. It's a sad one rather than a scary one, and the best thing in the first half of the series.
Bob, fed up with his family, plans a nasty prank on his wife and kids during a lakeside camp vacation he never wanted. Matt pours the anger from his failed relationships into a video game he's making. And in room 1280 of Heracles Hospital, something is keeping alive a man covered in terrible burns, who refuses to die. Larson's case continues in the epilogue.
This is the one Fazbear Frights book to read even if you skip the rest. 'The Man in Room 1280' picks up a character you know from the end of Pizzeria Simulator and shows what became of him. It's the closest the books get to the games' main villain, and it's the story people bring up first when arguing over how the books fit with Ultimate Custom Night. The other two stories are standard fare. Read it after Pizzeria Simulator at the earliest; it assumes you know how that game ends.
Nole tries to avoid facing an ugly truth and runs into a monster that punishes the past. Jake, nine years old and very sick, imagines what his life would be like if he were well again. Toby, desperate to impress his brother and father, chases a win at an arcade game. The epilogue moves Larson's case forward.
'The Real Jake' is the reason this book matters. It tells the life of the boy at the center of the Stitchwraith epilogue, who has been part of it since Step Closer, and it's the most affecting story in the series. The other two are forgettable. Nothing here explains a game directly, but if you're reading for Larson's case, this is where it gets its heart.
Reed sees a chance to teach the school bully a lesson, and it goes badly wrong. Robert, an exhausted single father, buys a fancy teddy bear to watch over his young son. Chris agrees to a grisly experiment to get into the school Science Club. The epilogue continues Larson's and Jake's stories.
A filler volume for anyone reading the series for the games. The stories are decent horror, but none of the three connects to anything you've played. Read it for the epilogue, which keeps Jake's thread moving, or skip ahead if you only want the books that touch the games.
Angel, disgusted by her spoiled stepsister's lavish birthday party, takes a hasty revenge. Hudson, whose life has been one tragedy after another, takes a well-paid security job that might turn things around. Sergio gets a novelty toy that brings him instant good luck. The epilogue carries Larson's case on.
Hudson's story is the one you'll recognize the shape of: a young man who needs the money takes a security job. It doesn't add facts about the games, but it plays the familiar setup from the guard's side of the desk. The other two are minor. As with most of the middle books, the epilogue is the reason to keep going.
Jack, desperate to save his kiddie pizzeria from bankruptcy, listens to his animatronics tech pitch a new invention. Colton, furious at an unfair arcade game, sets out to re-engineer it. Marley's best friend goes missing on a tour of the Freddy's Pizza Factory, and Marley knows what really happened. The epilogue follows Larson and Jake.
A middling volume with one story that will interest you more than the others: the title story is about the people who run and repair animatronic pizzerias, a side of Freddy's the games mostly leave to phone calls and blueprints. The pizza factory tour is a fun setting. Read it in sequence for the epilogue; on its own it adds little.
After losing a friend in an accident, Edward spends a fortune on a companion robot meant to keep the friend's memory alive. Mott flushes his brother's creepy new pets, and they don't stay gone. Homecoming queen Jessica reprograms a defunct animatronic to put her classmates in their place. The epilogue builds toward the end of Larson's case.
Here's where the finale gets set up: the epilogue pulls the threads together and you'll want Prankster within reach. The stories are a mixed bag, with 'Friendly Face' the strongest and 'Sea Bonnies' closer to a creature feature. Nothing new about the games themselves, but it's not a book to skip if you've followed the series this far.
Jeremiah is done being the butt of his coworker's jokes at their small game studio. Joel is counting the days until he can leave his family's garden center. Aimee finally gets up the courage to ditch her loud friend Mary Jo at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, during a game of hide-and-seek in the walls. The last epilogue brings Larson's case to its end.
The payoff for everyone who followed the Stitchwraith epilogue: the final part closes Larson's and Jake's stories and ties up several earlier tales, including one whose ending was left open in the first book. Aimee's hide-and-seek story is one of the creepiest in the run. Read the earlier books first or the ending won't land.
Three bonus stories that were cut while the series was being written. Dirk goes looking for a childhood memory at a one-of-a-kind animatronic pizzeria. Mandy finds something hidden in the files of her favorite horror game. Sylvia buys her son a real Freddy Fazbear mask for his birthday. There's no epilogue this time.
Leftovers, and it reads like it. There's no Larson epilogue, so it isn't part of the main thread, and none of the stories adds to the games. The Freddy mask story is the best of the three. It came out as an e-book and in the series box set rather than as a standalone paperback, so read it only if you want every story.
Oswald is ten, friendless and stuck with a dull summer in a fading town. At Jeff's Pizza, a run-down pizza place, he finds that the old ball pit takes him back to 1985, when the building was a Freddy Fazbear's Pizza full of kids. It's a 2D pixel-art horror adventure that moves between the two times, with stealth sections and puzzles.
You're Oswald. You've used the ball pit at Jeff's Pizza to travel back to 1985, and you've brought a sadistic animatronic back into the present with you. Now you have to get away from it, and keep your friends alive. An interactive novel with over twenty-five endings and two difficulty settings.
A third take on Oswald's story, after the Fazbear Frights original and the game. If you liked the Into the Pit game, this lets you push the story down paths neither of the others took. It adds nothing new to the setting, and it starts where the original turns, so read it after the book and the game.
Gregory, a young boy, wakes up locked inside Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex after closing. Glamrock Freddy hides him in his chest and offers to help him survive until 6 a.m. The rest of the band, Chica, Roxanne Wolf and Montgomery Gator, are hunting him, and so is Vanessa, the night guard. It's a free-roaming stealth game across a whole mall of attractions.
You're Devon, and you've won VIP passes to Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex: all you can eat, all expenses paid, guided by a digital companion called the Very Informative Pig. It's every kid's dream, until you start to wonder what your host really wants. A short choose-your-path book with multiple endings and two difficulty settings.
A short warm-up for the interactive novels rather than a story you need. It's fun to wander the Pizzaplex attractions from Security Breach and Help Wanted 2 by choosing paths, but nothing here touches the games' plot. It started as a free e-book in 2024 and got a paperback in 2025. Read it in an evening after Security Breach, or skip it.
Cassie, a girl Gregory knows, gets a call from him asking for help and climbs down into what's left of the Mega Pizzaplex, now wrecked and flooded with debris. Wearing a Roxy mask that shows her a cheerful augmented version of the ruins, she follows Gregory's voice deeper underground, shutting down security nodes while the broken remains of the Glamrock band roam the halls.
You're Cassie, and you and your friend Gregory love sneaking into Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex after hours. But Gregory has been tinkering with the animatronics, and the place has become much more dangerous. An interactive novel set in the Pizzaplex from Security Breach, with multiple endings and two difficulty settings.
Cassie and Gregory as a pair of friends. The book puts their friendship front and center and lets you run the Pizzaplex as Cassie, which is a nice side to see after Ruin. It doesn't explain anything in either game and the branches can be short. Read it after Ruin, when you know who these two are.
A second VR collection. You're a new Fazbear Entertainment employee proving yourself in every part of running and maintaining a pizzeria, from repairs to security shifts. The minigames now draw on Sister Location and Security Breach as well as the older games, with the Pizzaplex's Glamrock cast and Circus Baby's crew among the animatronics you deal with.
Arnold, a Fazbear Entertainment technician, is sent into Murray's Costume Manor, a costume workshop and warehouse, to recover schematics left behind there. The building is full of mascot costumes and half-finished machines. Something in there is an endoskeleton that wears those costumes, and it follows him from room to room. It's a first-person exploration and stealth game.
After Secret of the Mimic and Ruin
Three stories set around Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex. Selena is drawn to a forbidden object from her fiancé's past. Jessica leads a double life in the children's wing of a hospital. Maya, celebrating her sixteenth birthday at the Pizzaplex, can't resist exploring a closed-off attraction. An epilogue follows a construction crew working under the Pizzaplex as it's built.
The start of the Pizzaplex series, and the start of the epilogue serial that matters most for the games: the crew's story under the construction site is where the Mimic first turns up. 'Under Construction' tours the Pizzaplex you ran through in Security Breach, attraction by attraction. The stories don't change Gregory's night, but you'll recognize the halls. Read this one before the rest of the series.
Steve, a janitor who dreams of making video games, gets a job offer from Fazbear Entertainment that seems too good to be true. Aiden and Jace decide to scare some young kids in the Pizzaplex's tube maze. Billy wants only to become what he believes he really is, an animatronic. The epilogue continues the story of the construction crew.
'Help Wanted', the first story, is the reason to read this one: Fazbear Entertainment hires a game developer to turn the company's history into horror games, which is the premise of the Help Wanted VR game told from the inside. Billy's story continues in B7-2, the last book. 'HAPPS' itself is a solid tube-maze chase through a Pizzaplex attraction.
Sam has been afraid of anything unhealthy since his father died. Luca can't shake his dread of the Springtrap costume in the Pizzaplex's role-play area. Grady's claustrophobia makes his job as a Pizzaplex technician a misery. The epilogue carries on the construction crew's story.
Three stories built on fears, with the Pizzaplex attractions as backdrop. 'Pressure' is the one to read if you want a familiar face: Springtrap as a costume in a role-play game, which plays nicely off what you know from Five Nights at Freddy's 3. Otherwise this volume is mainly a stop on the way through the epilogue serial.
Caden senses that the underwater animatronics in Freddy's Fantasy Water Park have minds of their own. Robbie suspects that something has taken over the members of the Fazbear Fan Club. Abe can't shake the feeling that the Bobbiedot assistants in his Fazplex Tower apartment are hiding things. The epilogue continues.
Abe's story here is the first half of the Bobbiedots two-parter, about a smart apartment that turns on him, so read it right before The Bobbiedots Conclusion. The water park and fan club stories show bits of the Fazbear empire you never visit in the games. It adds nothing to Security Breach's plot, but it fills out the world around the Pizzaplex.
Fazbear Entertainment's board hands its storytelling to an artificial intelligence, with unintended results. Tony goes looking for the player behind impossible high scores at the Pizzaplex arcade. Abe keeps hunting for the old animatronics behind the trouble with his Bobbiedot home assistants. The epilogue moves on.
The end of Abe's Bobbiedots story and a look at the company behind the Pizzaplex through 'GGY', where Fazbear Entertainment's executives try to automate their own legend. That one is the most interesting for game players, since it plays with how the company tells stories about itself. Read it straight after Submechanophobia.
Astrid tells no one about the strange things her Buddytronic doll has been doing. Kara talks a Pizzaplex employee into letting her stay longer in the VR attraction. A Fazbear Entertainment engineer's personal project has surprises for anyone who comes across it. The epilogue builds toward the end of the construction crew's story.
'The Mimic' is the most important story in either anthology series for the modern games. It tells the books' version of where the Mimic came from, years before Secret of the Mimic told its own. The two versions don't match, and that's part of the fun, but the story gives away a lot of the game's mystery. Play Secret of the Mimic first, then read this.
After a session in the Pizzaplex's VR booth, Kai feels the tiger animatronic from the game has stayed with him. A new attraction fills Kane's head with thoughts that aren't his. Danny's plan to get the attention of his high school crush has consequences he couldn't imagine. The epilogue nears its end.
A minor volume. Kai's story uses the Pizzaplex VR booth, an idea close to Help Wanted's, but it doesn't connect to the game, and the other two stories are about the attractions rather than anyone you know. Mostly, you're here for the second-to-last part of the epilogue, which sets up the ending in B7-2.
Billy, who spent most of his life trying to become an animatronic, wakes up in a hospital to a new reality. Travis is haunted by something eerily familiar. Rory's nightmares blur his days and nights until he can't tell which is which. The final epilogue closes the story of what happened under the Pizzaplex while it was built.
The final epilogue is why this is recommended: it closes the construction crew's story, the books' account of the Mimic under the Pizzaplex. 'B7-2' wraps up Billy from HAPPS, and 'Alone Together' is a decent missing-person story. Read it last in the series, after Ruin and Secret of the Mimic, since the epilogue answers questions those games want you to ask.
Last reviewed October 27, 2026