The NUMA Files Books in Order: How to read Clive Cussler’s series?

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Written by American author Clive Cussler, The NUMA Files is a spin-off of the Dirk Pitt series. The story centers around Kurt Austin, Team Leader of National Underwater & Marine Agency (NUMA)’s Special Assignments division. It’s basically a The Sea Hunters: True Adventures With Famous Shipwrecks (1996) in which he explores the special world of undersea adventure that inspired and has its fictional parallel in the Dirk Pitt novels.

In the NUMA Files series, Dirk Pitt makes brief appearances in the books Serpent, White Death, Polar Shift, Devil’s Gate, The Storm, Zero Hour, and Ghost Ship and is mentioned in Lost City. Also, Some characters from the Pitt novels appear such as Sandecker, Al Giordino, Rudi Gunn, Hiram Yaeger, and St. Julien Perlmutter.

How to read The NUMA Files Series in Order?

  1. Serpent – When Kurt Austin, the leader of a NUMA exploration team, rescues marine archaeologist Nina Kirov off the coast of Morocco, he becomes the next target of Texas industrialist Don Halcon. A madman bent on carving a new nation out of the southwestern United States and Mexico, Halcon’s scheme hinges on Nina’s recent discovery, and a priceless pre-Columbian antiquity.
  2. Blue Gold – An investigation into the sudden deaths of a pod of gray whales leads NUMA leader Kurt Austin to the Mexican coast, where someone tries to put him and his mini-sub permanently out of commission. Meanwhile, in South America’s lush hills, a specially assigned NUMA team discovers a murdered body. Now they are in danger from a vicious cadre of bio-pirates intent on stealing medicinal discoveries worth millions.
  3. Fire Ice – Kurt Austin is preparing for an interview while aboard a research vessel in the Black Sea. But his television spot suddenly becomes a rescue mission when the waiting film crew is attacked on a nearby island. With little information on the attackers and no clue to their true agenda, Austin is forced to turn to an unlikely source: his old KGB Cold War adversary Vladimir Petrov.
  1. White Death – A confrontation between a radical environmentalist group and a Danish cruiser leave many survivors trapped inside a sunken ship. But when the head of NUMA Special Assignments, Kurt Austin, and his colleague, Joe Zavala, are enlisted to run the rescue operation, they uncover a far more sinister agenda on the part of the supposed environmental group.
  2. Lost City – Kurt Austin is mid-mission when his new colleague, the archeologist Skye Labelle, is called away to examine a mysterious 16th-century military helmet discovered in the possession of a very contemporary-looking corpse. Ms. Labelle’s research on the armor draws her into the sights of a ruthless black widow with her own plans for the artifact.
  3. Polar Shift – When the charismatic leader of an antiglobalization group plans to use the sixty-year-old findings of a Hungarian genius to create a polar shift and give the industrialized nations a jolt before reversing the effect, the NUMA Special Assignments Team must stop him before the world as we know it is destroyed.
  1. The Navigator – Years after an ancient Phoenician statue is stolen from the Baghdad museum, a series of murders sparks interest in the statue’s relevance in Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala, who lead the NUMA team on a historical investigation into the lost treasures of King Solomon.
  2. Medusa – After an undersea lab conducting research on a rare jellyfish known as the Blue Medusa mysteriously disappears and a bathysphere harboring Joe Zavala is attacked by an underwater vehicle and left helpless on the seafloor, Kurt Austin puts the NUMA Team on the case, a high-stakes endeavor that aims to save the lives of millions.
  3. Devil’s Gate – Nearby, a Japanese cargo ship blows up without warning. Racing to help, Kurt Austin and the NUMA team are beaten to the scene by heavily armed pirates. But when the ruthless gang’s own boat explodes as they’re making their escape, the men from NUMA are suddenly plunged from a disaster into a mystery.
  1. The Storm – In the middle of the Indian Ocean, a NUMA research vessel is taking water samples at sunset, when a crew member spots the familiar sheen of black oil ahead of them. But it is not oil. A few hours later, Kurt Austin, Joe Zavala, and other members of the NUMA Special Assignments Team are dispatched to check on their colleagues. They find no survivors.
  2. Zero Hour – Attempting to save a man, Kurt Austin lands himself in trouble with the Australian secret service. Though he gives them their only clue, Kurt is brusquely warned off. Intrigued and never one to ignore a mystery, he is soon on the trail of a crazed scientist.
  3. Ghost Ship – When Kurt Austin is injured attempting to rescue the passengers and crew from a sinking yacht, he wakes with fragmented and conflicted memories. Did he see an old friend and her children drown? Or was the yacht abandoned when he came aboard? For reasons he cannot explain, Kurt doesn’t trust either version of his recollection.
  1. The Pharaoh’s Secret – Head of NUMA special assignments, Kurt Austin and his most trusted friend, Joe Zavala tangle with a ruthless powerbroker scheming to build a new Egyptian empire as glorious as those of the Pharaohs. Part of their adversary’s plan rests on the manipulation of a newly discovered aquifer beneath the Sahara.
  2. Nighthawk – When the most advanced aircraft ever designed vanishes over the South Pacific, NUMA operatives Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala are drawn into a deadly contest to locate the fallen machine. Russia and China covet the radical technology, but the USA worries about a darker problem. The X-37 is carrying a dangerous secret.
  3. The Rising Sea – An alarming rise in the world’s sea levels sends Kurt Austin, Joe Zavala, and the rest of the NUMA scientific team rocketing around the globe in search of answers. What they find at the bottom of the East China Sea, however, is even worse than they imagined…
  1. Sea of Greed – After an explosion in the Gulf of Mexico destroys three oil rigs trying to revive a dying field, Kurt Austin and the NUMA Special Projects Team are tapped by the President of the United States to find out what’s gone wrong.
  2. Journey of the Pharaohs – In 1074 B.C., vast treasures disappear from the tombs of Egyptian Pharaohs. In 1927, a daredevil American aviator vanishes on an attempted transcontinental flight. And in the present day, a fishing trawler–along with its mysterious cargo–sinks off the coast of Scotland. How are these three mysterious events connected? And, more importantly, what do they mean for Kurt Austin and his NUMA team?
  3. Fast Ice – In the early days of World War II, the infamous German Luftwaffe embark upon an expedition to Antarctica, hoping to set up a military base to support their goal of world domination. Though the military outpost never comes to fruition, what the Nazis find on the icy continent indeed proves dangerous… In the present day, Kurt Austin and his assistant Joe Zavala embark for the freezing edge of the world after a former NUMA colleague disappears in Antarctica. While there, they discover a photo of the Luftwaffe expedition of 1939, and are drawn into a decades-old conspiracy.
  1. Dark Vector – A freighter carrying top-secret computers of unparalleled capability disappears in the Western Pacific. While searching for a lost treasure that once belonged to the famous Chinese pirate queen, Ching Shih, Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala are redirected to look for the missing vessel. Discovering that the sinking of the ship is just part of an intricate web of deception, they find themselves in the middle of a cyber-war between rival groups of hackers, both of whom want to control the flow of data around the world.
  2. Condor’s Fury – On a NUMA training mission in the Caribbean, Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala catch a distress call from a nearby freighter. Leaping into action, they locate a damaged vessel and a dead captain clutching a shotgun. While searching the freighter for clues, Kurt and Joe are ambushed by crew members who seem terrified and disoriented, almost brainwashed. The trawler they were hauling has vanished, taken-the men say-by baffling lights that circled the ship. Kurt and Joe deduce that the men are suffering from Havana Syndrome, which deepens the mystery and raises the stakes. Soon, they’re confronting Cuban mercenaries who plan to use magnificent modern airships to hijack a nuclear submarine-culminating in a life-or-death showdown in the skies.

Navigate The World of Clive Cussler

  1. The Dirk Pitt Series
  2. The NUMA Files
  3. The Oregon Files
  4. The Isaac Bell Adventures
  5. The Fargo Adventures
  6. All of Clive Cussler’s books

If our article about the NUMA Files reading order is useful to you, don’t forget to bookmark it to come back later to find out what’s the next book to read!

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2 Comments

  1. A better approach would be to publish a complete list of Cussler books by consecutive year that includes a code identifying the series. There are so many books that it takes a scholar to unwind and separate each series and put them in reading order. Kids probably do not care, but older readers do. Like the Hardy Boys or Tom Swift series that established the genre, Cussler or the publisher should have seen the confusion emerging and been more caring with this issue. But then, when a lot of money is being made, why not keep shoveling more out the door no matter who gets lost in the stampede to read the next one.

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