New York, NY: Putnam (2007)

The 1950 discovery of four bodies inside a sunken steam locomotive in a Montana lake gives way to the story of a murderous 1906 bank robber whose ruthlessness challenged Isaac Bell, a talented detective whose struggle to identify and capture the killer had been complicated by the great San Francisco earthquake

New York, NY: Simon & Schuster (1996)

Clive Cussler is acclaimed worldwide as the Grandmaster of Adventure, and his series of novels starring his action hero Dirk Pitt now have over 70,000,000 copies in print.

Whether it’s deep-sea diving, climbing mountains, or driving classic automobiles, adventure is at the heart of Cussler’s life. As Cussler himself writes, “Providing my readers adventure tales based around a devil-may-care character by the name of Dirk Pitt is only one chapter of my existence. I’m addicted to the challenge of the search, whether it’s for lost ship- wrecks, airplanes, steam locomotives, or people.”

In The Sea Hunters, his first nonfiction book, Cussler explores the special world of undersea adventure that inspired and has its fictional parallel in the Dirk Pitt novels. He describes his lifelong love for the sea and ships, and how his involvement with the search for John Paul Jones’s famous Revolutionary War ship, the Bonhomme Richard, led to his establishing the NUMA (National Underwater and Marine Agency) Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the discovery and preservation of historic shipwrecks.

From the more than sixty shipwrecks Cussler and his NUMA volunteers have found, he has chosen the twelve most interesting, whether because of the ship’s history, the circumstances of its sinking, or the trouble, frustration, and peril that were encountered while trying to find the sunken wreck.

With the same wonderful storytelling that Cussler brings to his novels, he describes his searches for such ships as the Union 24-gun frigate Cumberland, sunk during the Civil War by the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia (formerly the Merrimack); the Confederate Hunley, which became the first submarine in history to sink a warship; the U-21, a German U-boat, which during World War I became the first sub to sink a warship and escape; and the American troop transport Leopoldville, which was destroyed by a German submarine on Christmas Eve, 1944, with huge loss of life; as well as Engine #51, the lost locomotive of Kiowa Creek, which roared off a storm-weakened high bridge in 1878.

The wrecks date as far back as 1840 and span the continental United States, the Atlantic Ocean, and the North Sea.

As he does in the Dirk Pitt novels, Cussler opens each story with a creative dramatization of the ship and the way she met her end, then brings the story into the present as he describes the immense research and careful preparation so often necessary to find a long lost ship.

For example, he describes the tragic fate of the steamboat Lexington, which burst into flames in the frigid winter of 1840, causing the loss of over 150 lives — but sparing Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who missed the trip only because he arrived at the dock seconds too late.

There’s also the odd fate of the steamboat Charleston, which became the warship Zavala and which was so horribly damaged in a terrible Atlantic storm in 1842 that it was abandoned in a Galveston, Texas, marsh, and slowly sank from view. In tracing its location, Clive Cussler finally found it — under a parking lot!

Dramatic, compelling, and personal, Clive Cussler’s The Sea Hunters is as exciting and satisfy- ing as the best of his Dirk Pitt novels.

New York, NY: Simon & Schuster (1988)

Dirk Pitt’s hunt for ancient Egyptian treasure is sidetracked when the White House is threatened by terrorists from Egypt and Mexico and a cruise ship carrying the presidents of Egypt and Mexico is hijacked

New York, NY: Putnam (2001)

It is July 2003. In the middle of its maiden voyage, the luxury cruise ship Emerald Dolphin suddenly catches fire and sinks. What caused it? Why didn’t the alarms go off? What was its connection to the revolutionary new engines powering the ship? NUMA special projects director Dirk Pitt races to rescue the passengers and investigate the disaster, but he has no idea of the bizarre chain of events that are about to engulf him.
Before the next few weeks are over, Pitt will find himself confronted by an extraordinary series of monsters, both human and mechanical, modern and ancient. He will tread upon territory previously known only to legend. And at the end of it all, though many lives will be lost, and many saved, it is Pitt’s own life that will be changed forever.

New York, NY: Putnam (2002)

Collects the dramatic, true-life accounts of the remarkable underwater discoveries made by the author and his team of NUMA volunteers–a group dedicated to the exploration of historic wrecks–including the tale of the ghost ship Mary Celeste, the Carpathia, and other steamships, ironclads, a PT boat, a long-lost airplane, and a dirigible.

New York, NY: Putnam ( 2003)

Underwater adventurer Dirk Pitt and the NUMA crew are joined by his two grown children, fraternal twins whose existence he had been unaware, to investigate a black tide infesting the ocean off Nicaragua, a study complicated by the discovery of a mysterious artifact, a powerful storm, and an all-too-human conspiracy.

New York, NY: Simon & Schuster (2003)

Adventurer Dirk Pitt matches wits with a group of Japanese nationalist extremists out to establish a new empire as he races against time to recover an atomic bomb lost in the Pacific aboard a B-29 during World War II

New York, NY: Simon & Schuster (1992)

Stranded on the Sahara desert, Dirk Pitt and his friends uncover the truth about the fate of 1930s aviator Kitty Mannock and the secret behind Lincoln’s assassination

New York, NY: Putnam (1999)

September 1858: An Antarctic whaler stumbles on an aged wreck, its grisly frozen crew guarding crates of odd antiquities – and a skull carved from black obsidian.
March 2001: A team of anthropologists gazes in awe at a wall of strange inscriptions, moments before a blast seals them deep within the Colorado rock.
April 2001: A research ship manned by Dirk Pitt and members of the U.S. National Underwater and Marine Agency is set upon and nearly sunk by an impossibility – a vessel that should have died fifty-six years before.
Pitt knows that somehow all these incidents are connected, and his investigations soon land him deep in an ancient mystery with very modern consequences, up against a diabolical enemy unlike any he has ever known, and racing to save not only his own life – but the future of the world itself.

New York, NY: Simon & Schuster (1997)

Dirk Pitt matches wits with a nefarious Chinese smuggler who specializes in secretly transporting illegal Chinese immigrants into countries around the world, as he tracks his quarry to a remote port in Louisiana and searches for a treasure ship that sank at the beginning of World War II.

New York, NY: Simon & Schuster (1996)

While studying a deadly plague in the Pacific, Dirk Pitt rescues a band of rich castaways who were deserted by their cruise ship and learns that the plague had been caused by a passenger’s father, who uses ultrasound to mine diamonds.

New York, NY: Simon & Schuster (1994)

Dirk Pitt returns in an adventure involving a long-sunken treasure of gold, a lost civilization’s secrets, and an international smuggling ring.

New York, NY: Putnam (2004)

An enzyme that will dramatically prolong life has been discovered two thousand feet down in the North Atlantic, in an area known as “Lost City.” But why are the people attempting to harvest it getting killed? Why are the scientists in a remote Greek laboratory disappearing one by one? What does this all have to do with a body found frozen in the ice high up in the Alps? For Kurt Austin, leader of NUMA’s Special Assignments Team, and his colleague Joe Zavala, it’s clear they have their work cut out, but it may be even bigger than they think – in fact, it may be their greatest challenge ever.