Hi all,
Have finally got the Witcher series books and the games but yet to read or play either -- i am curious in regards with the timeline - joins all these together?. Is there an order i should read books/play the games to get the best flow understanding of the timeline involved etc?

It's fairly simple, as all the books follow the story in order of events (first the two volumes of short stories, then the five volume saga), and then the games follow up on that story in chronological order.

The only exception is the last book Season of Storms, published many years later. It's essentially a prequel to the whole series, but there is a framing narrative which is set after the events of the previous novels (Sapkowski ignores the games' story). So if you're going to read it at all, read it last. But really, it's not essential to read at all. It's not outright bad, but vastly inferior to the "original" series. I think everyone agries that it was basically Sapkowski dusting off some old, unused ideas for short stories and stitching them together to make a novel, all to get something from the renewed interest in the Witcher following the games' success. If I remember right it was supposed to lead to more novels, but that was in 2013 and there's been no news since.

Glad you asked.

The order is:

The Last Wish
Sword of Destiny
Blood of Elves
Time of Contempt
Baptism of Fire
The Tower of the Swallow
The Lady of the Lake
The Witcher
Witcher 2 - Assassin of Kings
Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt

Season of Storms, and the graphic novels are all set in the time of The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny (the "short story time").

Then there is "Something Ends, Something Begins" which is a short story collection of different stories, two of them are set in the Witcher universe. One is a "prequel", and one is a parody ending of The Witcher. I would recommend to read those a bit later in, because the latter only makes sense if you already know all the important characters. I disagree. Season of Storms is a good story in the vein of the first two books (small scale) with the seriousness of the novels. They even made a graphic novel from it (Fox Children), although it has been toned down a lot from the original (would have been too "graphic" I guess.

Like I said it's not bad, and yes, it is in the vein of the first two book, but not nearly as good. The wit, charm and subtle beauty of those stories is hardly there at all. The Fox Children segment they turned into a graphic novel was probably the best part of it.

As for the graphic novels, I think the first one, House of Glass, was the only really good one. Fox Children is ok, but I don't really see the point of turning a fragment of a book into a comic, and the third, Curse of Crows, I found to be ok but absolutely forgettable. Literaly, I can't remember what it was about at all.

Edit: There was also a two-part comic Reasons of State, which is apparently available here on GOG. It was quite good for such a short story.