NUMA Files

About the NUMA Files series

The NUMA Files follows Kurt Austin, the Special Projects Director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency, and his partner Joe Zavala as they investigate environmental disasters, sunken relics, and eco-terrorist or state-sponsored plots with an oceanographic hook — toxic algae blooms, deep-sea mining, arctic resource wars, ancient shipwrecks and lost technologies. It's a sister series to Clive Cussler's flagship Dirk Pitt novels, sharing the NUMA setting and men's-adventure DNA but following a different lead duo and team of specialists (including tech expert Hiram Yaeger and, later, twins Dirk Pitt Jr. and Summer's own generation of NUMA staff). Cussler co-wrote the series first with mystery novelist Paul Kemprecos through Medusa (2009), then with Graham Brown from Devil's Gate (2011) onward.

Since Cussler's 2020 death, Graham Brown has continued the series solo, keeping to Cussler's format of globe-trotting action, real ocean science, and a lightly comic partnership at the center. It's a good pick for readers who enjoy Dirk Pitt but want a parallel cast, or who prefer Kurt Austin's slightly more environmentally-focused mission briefs.

How to read this series

Publication order, starting with Serpent (1999). As with Dirk Pitt, most NUMA Files mysteries resolve within their own book, so the series is easy to start anywhere, but Kurt Austin's NUMA team and its running characters develop across the numbered novels.

The series changed co-authors partway through: Paul Kemprecos wrote the first eight books with Cussler (through Medusa, 2009), Graham Brown took over from Devil's Gate (2011), and Brown has written the series alone since Cussler's 2020 death. There's no reboot or jump in continuity at either transition — publication order reads as one continuous series throughout.