When mysterious black obsidian skulls and other artifacts of an exceedingly ancient culture begin to turn up in odd places, Pitt jumps in with both feet. It soon becomes dangerously apparent that a powerful, amoral group of fanatics calling itself the Fourth Empire wants the strange discoveries to remain underground. Pitt teams up with a beautiful red-haired expert in ancient languages to decipher the meaning of the artifacts. They were made 10 millennia ago in a then-temperate Antarctica by a seafaring civilization advanced enough to predict its own destruction by a comet impact. Now the Fourth Empire (whose literal and figurative progenitor comes as no surprise) is predicting a similar disaster in only a matter of months, and preparing to take control of the earth.

Cussler's known for hands-on research--his hobbies are the backbone of Pitt's adventures: flying, climbing, diving, racing. The scientific and historical riffs that fill in the background of Atlantis Found are the weakest parts of the book--they're Pitt-less, and they give every discovery in the book away early. But what the heck--Cussler's not the king of suspense, he's the emperor of nonstop action. Atlantis Found bounces along on a good-humored techno-joyride, and for Cussler's legion of fans, that will be more than enough. --Barrie Trinkle

An underwater graveyard in the Pacific Northwest... A mysterious seaport in the bayous of Louisiana... A diabolical plot to destroy America!

Unknown waters, 1948. The Princess Dou Wan, a sea-weary cruise ship covertly seized by Chiang Kai-shek, slams into a devastating storm that tears the hull apart and sends it and a mysterious cargo down into the depths, lost to all searchers for more than fifty years.

Pacific Northwest, 2000. Dirk Pitt® rescues a beautiful undercover immigration agent from Qin Shang, an insatiably greedy smuggler whose vast fortune is made selling Chinese immigrants into slavery around the globe. Shang's campaign contributions have bought him a collection of powerful U.S. politicians, but Pitt finds the secret behind Shang's vast and mystifying seaport in the Louisiana bayou to be shockingly sinister. From an adrenaline-pumped race against time and tide up the Mississippi River to a desperate dash to recover Chinese treasures, Dirk Pitt faces one of his most formidable foes -- a madman bent on killing hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children with a catastrophic surge of mass destruction.

<UL TYPE=DISC>

<LI>The prologue to Clive Cussler's next exciting DIRK PITT novel!

<LI>An exclusive interview with Clive Cussler -- including the evolution of the DIRK PITT novels and the close ties between Cussler and his hero

<LI>"The Reunion" -- an original short story in which Cussler crashes NUMA's twenty-year reunion and reminisces with DIRK PITT and all his favorite characters

<LI>A brief synopsis of every DIRK PITT novel, including why Pacific Vortex! -- not The Mediterranean Caper -- should be considered the first PITT novel

<LI>A concordance for the DIRK PITT novels -- complete with A-Z listings of every major character, car, ship, aircraft, weapon, locale, and more.

Complete with rare photos, dedications, the Clive Cussler car collection, and advanced DIRK PITT trivia, Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt Revealed contains a mother lode of information every fan will treasure.

When Kurt Austin, the leader of a courageous National Underwater & Marine Agency (NUMA) exploration team, rescues beautiful 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 involving Christopher Columbus, and a priceless pre-Columbian antiquity buried in the battered remains of the sunken Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria.

BLUE GOLD

An investigation into the sudden deaths of gray whales leads NUMA crew 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 mysterious tribe, a mythical white goddess, and a murderous cadre of bio-pirates intent on stealing medicinal secrets worth millions. Soon, Austin and his crew realize they’re working opposite ends of the same grand scheme. But every step toward salvation takes them deeper into a dense jungle of treachery, blackmail, and death.