Clive Cussler
in order.

Clive Cussler wrote his first novel at night while working as an award-winning advertising creative director, inventing marine engineer and adventurer Dirk Pitt as a deliberately larger-than-life answer to the brooding spies of 1970s thrillers. When Raise the Titanic! became a blockbuster in 1976, Cussler quit advertising for good and went on to publish more than 80 books, landing on the New York Times bestseller list over 100 times.

Cussler didn't just write about shipwrecks — he found them. With royalties from his novels he founded the real National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), a nonprofit that has discovered more than 60 historically significant wreck sites, including the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley. His heroes' love of vintage automobiles was autobiographical too: Cussler amassed a museum-worthy collection of over 100 classic cars in Colorado, and famously wrote himself into his own novels as a recurring cameo character.

In his later years Cussler turned his empire into a family business and a thriller factory, launching the NUMA Files, Oregon Files, Isaac Bell, and Fargo series with hand-picked co-authors, including his son Dirk Cussler. Since his death in 2020, those co-authors have continued the series under his name, and 'a Clive Cussler novel' remains shorthand for lost treasure, impossible escapes, and history-soaked adventure on the high seas.