David Poyer Books In Order

The Med

A powerful and fast moving tale of the Navy Marine Corps team in action, on a dangerous mission in the volatile Eastern Mediterranean. Cloaked by the mists of dawn, Task Force 61 carrying tanks, aircraft, and over 5000 Marines steams toward Syria with deadly intent. Their mission: rescue 100 hostages from a terrorist stronghold alive. With realism seldom seen in military fiction, The Med is a magnificent and timely epic that brings the human drama of armed conflict compellingly to life. Driven by believable, flesh and blood characters, it is a painstakingly detailed portrait of amphibious warfare as only David Poyer can paint it. The Med is today’s most explosive tale of international crisis, personal valor, and emotional struggle a disturbingly plausible novel that crackles with non stop action.

The Gulf

Defense policy makers from Britain and The Gulf analyze different aspects of British policy and its repercussions for Gulf security. Seeking to nurture defense and security dialogue, contributors examine both immediate and potential threats to Gulf security and underline the need for The Gulf countries to develop a greater range of consultative mechanisms. This book offers valuable perspectives on some of the more critical issues involved and provides interesting insight on the views held by prominent decision makers, including Lord Robertson, General Sir Charles Guthrie, HH Sheikh Salman of Bahrain and HH Sheikh Salem of Kuwait.

The Circle

For four years at Annapolis he prepared for this, pledging his youth, his ambition, and even his life. But when junior officer Dan Lenson finally gets his commission, it’s an aging World War II destroyer. Now, with a mix of pride and fear, he heads into the world’s most dangerous seas. As the Ryan plunges into the dark waters of the Arctic Circle at the height of storm season, Lenson and the crew pursue a mysterious and menacing enemy. But he soon discovers a foe even more dangerous within the Ryan, advancing a shocking agenda that drives the ship closer and closer to disaster testing Lenson’s life and loyalty to their very limit.

The Passage

The Navy’s most sophisticated destroyer, the USS Barrett carries a top secret computer that can pilot an unmanned ship and send it into battle. As the weapons officer charged with its first mission Lieutenant Dan Lenson has a chance to make naval history. But when the system develops a sinister virus and a sailor takes his own life amid ugly allegations, Lenson finds himself caught in a web of betrayal. Now, on the treacherous Windward Passage between the U.S. and Cuba, he’ll undergo the ultimate test of honor and faith one that could cost him his career, his ship, and even his life.

Tomahawk

The bestselling novels of David Poyer have been read by millions around the world, and The New York Times Book Review has proclaimed: ‘Poyer knows what he is writing about when it comes to anything on, above or below the water.’ Now he unleashes a heart pounding new novel combining the thrilling elements of military intrigue, Pentagon politics, Chinese espionage and human drama in his finest work to date. It was a missile that would change the world. He was the man at ground zero. Once Lieutenant commander Dan Lenson had a ship and a family. Now he is on his own, deep within Washington’s military industrial complex. His task: shepherd a controversial weapon through the Navy’s testing process to deployment. But powerful forces are lined up against the Tomahawk missile and against Lenson. For Dan Lenson, separating his enemies from his friends is the beginning of the most dangerous war of all…

China Sea

David Poyer’s cycle of modern Navy tales ranks among the finest nautical fiction of our time. With China Sea, his self doubting protagonist Daniel V. Lenson faces for the first time the unforgiving challenge of command at sea. Ordered to relieve an alcoholic skipper, Dan finds he has inherited a damaged ship, an untrustworthy crew, and an ambiguous mission. He is to take the USS Oliver C. Gaddis, soon to become the PNS Tughril, on her final voyage to be donated to Pakistan. But in Kirachi, Dan gets new orders: take Gaddis still further east, and operate against modern pirates preying on commercial shipping in the remote, dangerous South China Sea. Pursuing an elusive and shadowy foe into an exotic, isolated world of hazardous reefs and tropical islands, Dan gradually discerns a larger purpose behind his supposed objective. Who are these ‘pirates?’What expansionist cunning supports them?Abandoned by the Navy, threatened by a mutinous crew, a murderous shipmate, and an approaching typhoon, Gaddis struggles to survive without crossing the shadow line herself. Filled with suspense, battle, and unforgettable descriptions of the sea’s beauty and violence, China Sea continues Dan Lenson’s star crossed career in what Booklist calls, ‘One of the outstanding bodies of nautical fiction during the last half century.’

Black Storm

With blistering action sequences and incredibly detailed military insight, Black Storm takes the reader along with the most covert Special Ops group straight to Saddam Hussein’s stronghold, through harrowing instances of close quarters combat, and into the heart of danger.A Maniacal LeaderWith coalition forces amassing at the Iraqi border, Saddam Hussein issues a terrifying threat: In response to any Allied offense, he will use his most secret weapon to destroy Israel. Counting down the hours before their forces invade, American commanders must decide whether this threat is the last minute posturing of a madman or a calculated promise from one of the world’s most feared commanders. An Impossible MissionWith thousands of innocent lives hanging in the balance, a long range force reconnaissance team has been assembled and given the most daunting task: locate a weapon that no one can find or identify. Lieutenant Commander Dan Lenson, attached to the team to help program the airstrike that will cripple Saddam, finds himself humping through enemy territory with a group of hardened marines. They’re headed straight for central Baghdad in what will be the most dangerous operation of the war. Now Lenson must decide whether the secret he carries is worth the life of his teammates and his own…

The Command

After receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor for action in Iraq, Commander Daniel V. Lenson is given new orders: ‘Take over as skipper of USS Thomas W. Horn.’ His mission: Prepare the Tomahawk equipped strike destroyer and her crew for the Red Sea, where she’ll join an international task force searching for weapons of mass destruction. But this will be no routine deployment. Horn will be the first US Navy warship to deploy with an integrated male and female crew a controversial and politically explosive experiment that will raise questions about morale, behavior, training, sexual attraction, and ultimately, performance under fire. Facing sandstorms, smugglers, and ambushes, Horn’s increasingly polarized crew will conduct demanding, diplomatically sensitive search and seizure operations against foreign vessels attempting to smuggle arms to Iraq. But the real nightmare is brewing in Bahrain. There the most dangerous bomb expert in Al Qaeda has targeted Horn for attack as the first step in a plan to redraw the map of the whole Middle East. With gripping action scenes and an explosive climax, The Command continues Dan Lenson’s star crossed career in a series that explores both global and deeply personal implications of honor, duty, power, and war.

The Threat

From the bestselling author of The Circle, The Med, The Gulf, The Passage, Tomahawk, China Sea, Black Storm, and The Command…
a heartstopping thriller of danger and conspiracy at the highest levels of command and government. Medal of Honor winner Commander Dan Lenson wonders who proposed that he be assigned to the White House military staff. It’s a dubious honor serving a president the Joint Chiefs hate more than any other in modern history. Lenson reports to the West Wing to direct a multiservice team working to interdict the flow of drugs from Latin America. Never one to just warm a chair, he sets out to help destroy the Cartel and uncovers a troubling thread of clues that link cunning and ruthless drug lord Don Juan Nu ez to an assault on a nuclear power plant in Mexico, an obscure Islamic relief agency in Los Angeles, and an air cargo company’s imminent flight plan across the United States. Lenson has to battle civilian aides and his own distaste for politics to derail a terrorist strike over the Mexican border. His punishment for breaking the rules to do so is to be sent to the East Wing…
as the military aide carrying the nuclear ‘football,’ the locked briefcase with the secret codes for a nuclear strike, for a president he suspects is having an affair with his wife. And something else is going on beneath the day to day turmoil and backstabbing. As his marriage deteriorates and his frustration with Washington builds, Lenson becomes an unwitting accomplice in a dangerous and subversive conspiracy. The U.S. military is responsible for its Commander in Chief’s transportation and security. If someone felt strongly enough about it…
it would be easy for the president to die.

Korea Strait

United States Navy officer and Medal of Honor winner Dan Lenson’s mission is to observe an international military exercise involving the navies of South Korea, Japan, Australia, and America.

It should be routine duty for Dan, but old alliances are unraveling, as North Korea threatens the U.S. and China expands its influence. Acting as both adviser and adversary to a ruthless South Korean task force commander, Dan must stop a wolfpack of unidentified submarines, armed with nuclear weapons, which is trying to elude Allied surveillance and penetrate the Sea of Japan. Is it the start of an invasion…
or an elaborate feint, to divert attention from a devastating attack?

Battling faulty weapons, a complacent Washington establishment, and a fierce typhoon season at sea, Dan must act on his own even if doing so means the end of his career, the lives of his observers, and the risk of nuclear war. Featuring fierce action at sea and political intrigue at the highest levels, Korea Strait is both a first class thriller and a prescient look at how the next major war might begin.

The Weapon

A deadly new weapon hits the international arms market and the only way to preserve the balance of power in the Mideast is to hijack the Iranian sub that carries it.

United States Navy Commander and Medal of Honor winner Dan Lenson has been handed another outside the box assignment. TAG Charlie, an elite team of active duty sailors, SEALs, and civilian analysts, is tasked to investigate and defuse emerging naval threats around the globe. When the Skhval K an unstoppable rocket torpedo designed to destroy U.S. aircraft carriers is demonstrated at a Moscow arms show, Dan tries to buy one so that the U.S. Navy can build countermeasures. But he’s lucky to escape with his life when he s set up by Russia s new counterespionage service.

When the Russians sell the new weapon to Iran and China instead, Dan decides that if he can t buy it, he ll steal it. But when a daring nighttime penetration of Iran s largest naval base goes wrong too, Dan finds himself captaining a submarine he barely knows how to submerge, pursued by Iranian destroyers and sub hunting aircraft through the shallow, hazardous Persian Gulf.

Authentic action and daring espionage combine in a timely thriller set in a hair trigger military environment.

The Crisis

Naval Commander Dan Lenson and his Tactical Analysis Group specialize in out of the box military assign ments. Comprising sailors, Navy SEALS, and civilians, the group investigates and defuses naval threats around the world. Dan and his team are assigned to transform a patrol craft squadron in the Red Sea into a leaner, meaner Navy. Mean while, in northern Africa, drought and famine have brought a nation to the brink of civil war. When the United States decides on intervention to stabilize the region, Dan and his team become the point people for the humanitarian mission. When a charismatic young jihadist coordinates a ferocious insur gency against the U.S. presence, Dan and his team must kill him in order to save thousands of lives. With exciting action, espionage, and exotic locales, The Crisis asks bigger questions about our obligations to relieve the suffering of other countries, the risk of American lives to rescue foreigners, and the role of democratic government in nations with no central leadership.

Winter In The Heart

With his life hanging in the balance, W. T. Halvorsen tells the jury about a corrupt oil company dumping waste on an innocent community. By the author of The Circle.

As the Wolf Loves Winter

It is snowing in the wintry mountains of northwestern Pennsylvania. Once the land of wilderness scouts, later of the boomtowns of the first American oil barons, it is now a spare country of proud men and women hanging on to their lives, dignity, and what’s left of prosperity in the declining years of the twentieth century. One tough old man, W.T. Halvorsen, is not going to let it all slip away without a fight. And the wolves are beginning to howl again in the mountains.

Thunder On The Mountain

The western Pennsylvania oil country is the historic area where the American oil industry was founded: it spawned Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller’s fortune, and perhaps even the Sherman antitrust laws, as well as generations of labor strife. It is, therefore, one of the cradles of discontent in contemporary America. In Thunder On The Mountain, Poyer revisits the terrible winter of 1936 when a strike to organize the workers in the Thunder Oil Company is called after a refinery disaster exposes the company’s contempt for workers’ safety. W.T. ‘Kid Nitro’ Halvorsen, a young boxer and well shooter, becomes a leader of the strike against Daniel Thunner’s beloved family company. The strike draws national attention, which increases with the arrival of ruthless strikebreaker Pearl Deatherage and of determined CIO organizer Doris Gurley Golden. As the unrest spreads in scale and fury, Halvorsen and Thunner must put their ideas of honor and morality to the test. In a high stakes game of one upmanship and violence, who will prove himself kin of the mountain? Packed with insight, vivid characters, and a burning concern for justice, Thunder On The Mountain is a tough, penetrating, violent novel in the tradition of Jack London, John Steinbeck, E.L. Doctorow, and Mary Lee Settle and, now, David Poyer.

Hatteras Blue

In a graveyard of the Atlantic, a treacherous sercret has been buried…
until now.A U boat went down in 1945, and now, more than 40 years later, the bodies of the three crewmen have surfaced near Hatteras Island. But their chilling reappearance has unleashed a tide of powerful forces Na*zis with a ruthless plan to corner the South American drug market, and a shadowy figure with his own dangerous agenda. We ex Navy SEAL salvage diver Tiller Galloway probes beneath the surface, he finds himself face to face with a killer in a gut wrenching firefight that cilmaxes hundreds of feet below sea level. Spilling with underwater adventure that will leave you gasping for air, bestselling author David Poyer writes gripping undersea thrillers in the spellbinding tradition of Clive Cussler and John D. MacDonald.

Bahamas Blue

400 feet deep, in the treacherous waters of green turtle cay, lies the world’s most dangerous cargo…
waiting for the world’s most daring diver. Salvage diver Tiller Galloway vowed he would never work for ‘The Baptist’ again. Until the menacing kingpin makes him an offer he can’t refuse, sending him deep into the beautiful blue Caribbean to raise fifty tons of cargo a dive to the razor’s edge of death. Caught in the cross fire of a crazed underboss and hostile islanders, Tiller takes on a nightmare of double crosses, as a scenario more sinister than he ever imagined begins to unfold. From the author of Down to a Sunless Sea comes this shattering sequel to Hatteras Blue, a tale as explosive as those of Clive Cussler and Peter Benchley, and packed with some of the most breathless undersea scenes ever written.

Louisiana Blue

Beneath the shimmering surface of the Louisiana Gulf, a deadly scheme is making waves. Former Navy SEAL Tiller Galloway is running from a vengeful past and needs to make himself scarce. Where better to lie low than under the murky, hazardous depths of the Louisiana Gulf? Galloway is doing the most dangerous kind of diving the kind that brings big money. But there’s fathomless corruption that could lead to an environmental Armageddon. Now Galloway must look the other way or look into his own watery grave…
In the unforgettable tradition of Clive Cussler and John D. MacDonald, bestselling author David Poyer bring you to the depths of terror with his breathless scenes of undersea adventure.

Down to a Sunless Sea

Depth: 105…
Wriggling like an eel, he forced himself up into the narrow gap he’d created…
Rocks scraped and clattered away. A hint of doubt Should I be doing this? was answered by the calm comfort that pervaded his mind now. Nothing was going to happen…
Everything was going to be all right…
Welcome to the most dangerous sport on Earth: where cave divers step into murky Florida ponds and end up hundreds of feet beneath the ground, slinking through Swiss cheese like rock formations, past strange underground creatures, heading down tunnels that may open into caverns, or lead nowhere at all. Open water diver and ex Navy SEAL Tiller Galloway has come to this watery underworld to find out why an old friend died young and take one last shot at being a father, a lover, and a friend. But with a woman who is opening up her heart, and a conspiracy closing in around him, Galloway must navigate between lies told aboveground and truths hidden in the depths where a violent battle is about to explode…
Combining the knife edged action of Clive Cussler with the heartstopping storytelling power of John D. MacDonald, David Poyer stakes his claim as one of America’s most remarkable thriller writers and a master of underwater suspense.

Fire on the Waters

The opening volume in a gripping new fictional series of the Civil War at sea, from the sailor and novelist who ‘knows what he is writing about when it comes to anything on, above, or below the water’ The New York Times Book Review. The year is 1861, and America shudders on the brink of disunion. Elisha Eaker, scion of a wealthy Manhattan banking family, joins the Navy against his father’s wishes. He does it as much to avoid an arranged marriage to his cousin, Araminta Van Velsor, as to defend the flag. As war looms, Eli boards the sloop of war U.S.S. Owanee. There he meets Lieutenant Ker Claiborne at his own moment of decision. Claiborne, Owanee’s executive officer, is an Annapolis graduate who’s seen action in the West Indies and the Africa Station on the Navy’s Anti Slavery Patrol. Cool and competent in storm and battle, he now faces an agonizing choice between the Navy he loves and his native Virginia. Whichever road he takes, he’ll be called a traitor. Within days, Owanee is ordered on a desperate mission to relieve Fort Sumter, the last outpost of Union authority in the newly declared Confederacy. And in Manhattan, Araminta makes her own move for independence. So begins Fire on the Waters, a tale of honor, loyalty, and the hunger for freedom. With authentic nautical and historical detail, veteran storyteller David Poyer follows Eli, Araminta, Ker, and their loved ones and shipmates into a maelstrom of divided loyalties, bitter partings, stormy seas, governmental panic, political blundering, and finally the test of battle as the bloodiest and most divisive war in American history begins. Poyer’s deep, complex characters and vivid evocation of the heroic twilight of the Age of Sail will earn Fire on the Waters a place beside the work of Patrick O’Brian, Nicholas Monsarrat, and C. S. Forester.

A Country of Our Own

In A Country of Our Own, David Poyer offers the second volume of his epic novel cycle of The Civil War at Sea, a story of the war across the waters of the world that decided the bitterest struggle America has ever waged. We first met Lt. Ker Custis Claiborne, formerly of the United States Navy, in Fire on the Waters. Claiborne is no admirer of the institution of slavery. But he’s also a Virginian. When the North decides to preserve an outworn Union by force, his course is clear. In A Country of Our Own, he ‘goes South,’ joining first the Virginia Navy, then the fledgling Confederate States Navy. After fighting on the shores of the Potomac alongside the hastily mustered Army of Virginia, Ker runs the blockade out of New Orleans aboard a converted sidewheeler turned Confederate raider. He and his saturnine mentor, Captain Parker Trezevant, burn, sink, and destroy across the Caribbean, to undermine the Union’s financial might and force a truce favorable to the Confederacy. But when that first cruiser proves under armed and short legged, Ker joins Commander James Bullock in England to buy or build a ship of war capable of sweeping Union commerce from the seas. When a daring coup puts Ker in command of the fastest, most dangerous raider ever to range from Brazil to Boston the ex opium clipper C.S.S. Maryland he sets Yankee seamen a tremble wherever the water’s salt and seagulls scream. And he may even decide the outcome of the war. In the tradition of Patrick O’Brian and C. S. Forester, A Country of Our Own is historical sea fiction at its best authentic, engrossing, vivid, and expertly paced from the master sea yarner The New York Times Book Review raves ‘knows what he is writing about when it comes to anything on, above, or below the water.’

That Anvil of Our Souls

In the third volume of David Poyer’s monumental Civil War at Sea cycle, North meets South in the momentous first battle between ironclads.

In Fire on the Waters America split in two and the characters in David Poyer’s Civil War at Sea series had to choose sides. Then, in A Country of Our Own, Ker Claiborne took the war north, aboard the Confederacy’s most formidable commerce raider.

Now, in That Anvil of Our Souls, David Poyer takes us into the turrets and casemates of the most historic sea engagement of the Civil War. In New York, Theo Hubbard is the engineer for a revolutionary new ‘fighting machine,’ the Monitor, and is eager to become a man of means…
even if it compromises his integrity. In Norfolk, Catherine Claiborne faces her husband’s impending hanging for piracy, their baby daughter’s death, and the realities of occupation.

In Richmond, Lieutenant Lomax Minter must find a spy who threatens the South’s ultimate weapon: a tremendous ironclad, rebuilt from a sunken wreck; aging Dr. Steele witnesses the horrors that are the aftermath of glory; and gun captain Hanks, escaped slave, struggles with the twin snakes of ‘freedom.’

Ghosting

Dr. Jack Scales, a prominent neurosurgeon, is at the peak of his career. To celebrate, he decides to make up for lost time and buys a sailing yacht christened Slow Dance, for a family cruise to Bermuda. But the family is strained: Jack’s wife Arlen is secretly considering leaving the marriage; Rick, their bipolar twenty year old son, may need to be committed to a group home; Haley, a rebellious teenager, would rather be anywhere but trapped on a boat with her family; and Jack himself is not prepared for the challenge of the open sea. Day by day, the Scales face mounting dangers. A lightning storm nearly destroys the boat, Ric s unstable condition worsens, and both Arlen and Haley realize that Jack is in over his head. Still, emerging from the storm, they find a fragile unity until a man adrift on a raft leads them into danger against a terrifying gang of smugglers who will stop at nothing to gain control of Slow Dance. Filled with an expert seaman s knowledge and driven by conflicted characters, Ghosting is a new direction for an established author: a thrilling adventure as unpredictable as the sea itself.