09/28/2020

In 2019’s The Final Option, Juan Cabrillo, the captain of the Oregon, was forced to sink his beloved ship in a dire emergency. Now, in the late Cussler’s suspenseful 15th Oregon Files novel, also coauthored with Morrison, Cabrillo, the chairman of the organization known as the Corporation, is taking the rebuilt Oregon on a sea trial in the Strait of Malacca when he gets a report of a tanker under terrorist attack. Cabrillo and crew rush to the rescue. Meanwhile, April Jin and her husband, Angus Polk, who each recently spent time in an Australian prison for treason, receive a posthumous message from their one-time employer, Chinese industrialist Lu Yang, asking them to continue a mission he was involved in shortly before his death. Jin and Polk, operating from a trimaran that’s armed with an experimental plasma weapon and a new paralyzing gas, set out to achieve Lu’s goal of taking over Australia. Only Cabrillo and the fabulous new Oregon with its cutting-edge weaponry stand in their way. Readers will race through the pages to see what happens next. Fans will hope this isn’t the last adventure from Cussler (1931–2020). Agent: Peter Lampack, Peter Lampack Agency. (Nov.)

Clive Cussler is the author of more than seventy books in five bestselling series, including Dirk Pitt, NUMA Files, Oregon Files, Isaac Bell, and Sam and Remi Fargo. His life nearly parallels that of his hero Dirk Pitt. Whether searching for lost aircraft or leading expeditions to find famous shipwrecks, he and his NUMA crew of volunteers have discovered and surveyed more than seventy-five lost ships of historic significance, including the long-lost Confederate submarine Hunley, which was raised in 2000 with much publicity. Like Pitt, Cussler collects classic automobiles. His collection features more than one hundred examples of custom coachwork. Cussler and his wife make their home in Arizona.Boyd Morrison is the coauthor with Cussler of the Oregon Files novels Piranha, The Emperor's Revenge, Typhoon Fury, and Shadow Tyrants, and the author of six other books. He is also an actor and engineer, with a doctorate in engineering from Virginia Tech, who has worked on NASA's space station project at Johnson Space Center and developed several patents at Thomson/RCA. In 2003, he fulfilled a lifelong dream by becoming a Jeopardy! Champion. He lives in Seattle.