In the series description it says that it was the recommended reading order by the author. However, I do not believe we should be using this, and have reordered them by publication date.
I think #2, per the series note (Book order is the one suggested in the author's website, not publication date or fictional chronology) and correspondingly the author's website:
It looks like the book titles in that set of books haven't been updated with series info.
On the Author page, it shows as as #1:
/author/show...
But on the Book page and Series page, it shows as #2:
/book/show/1...
/series/9441...
Thanks for advice.