Books in series
#1
Hell Divers
2016
More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search of a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers—men and women who risk their lives by skydiving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.
When one of the remaining airships is damaged in an electrical storm, a Hell Diver team is deployed to a hostile zone called Hades. But there’s something down there far worse than the mutated creatures discovered on dives in the past—something that threatens the fragile future of humanity.
#1.5
The Lost Years, Part I
2023
From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Nicholas Sansbury Smith comes a brand new novella set in the world of the Hell Divers series. Before you knew him as the king or the Immortal, he was Commander Xavier "X" Rodriguez—with ninety-six dives under his belt, the most experienced Hell Diver on the airship known as the Hive. Time after time, he dived through the electrical storms, returning with parts to keep his home in the sky. Then, on a jump into Hades, the most hostile environment in North America, he sacrificed everything for mission and team. They returned to the airship with the fuel cells needed to keep the Hive running, but X was left behind. This is the story of how he becomes the last man on Earth. His will drives him to keep fighting, to survive the monsters and the radiation in the wastes, to find a way back home. But as the days pass, he feels the things that make him human slipping away. He has become a waif, a phantom, with little to live for. Then he stumbles upon something that makes him feel again. This is the chronicle of those lost years, told for the first time ever.
#2
Ghosts
2017
Ten years ago, Hell Diver Xavier “X” Rodriguez fell to Earth. Those he left behind went on without him aboard the airship he once called home.
Michael Everheart—the boy once known as Tin—has grown into a man and the commander of Hell Diver Raptor Team. While Michael dives to help keep the Hive in the air, Captain Leon Jordan rules with an iron fist at the helm of the ship. But unrest stirs under his strict leadership as a prophecy of hope sweeps the lower decks.
When a mysterious distress signal calls the Hell Divers to the surface, Michael and his loyal team begin to uncover long-buried truths and the secrets Captain Jordan will do anything to keep. They dive so humanity survives… but will they survive the ultimate betrayal?
#3
Deliverance
2018
They will dive, but will humanity survive?
Left for dead on the nightmarish surface of the planet, Commander Michael Everhart and his team of Hell Divers barely escape with their lives aboard a new airship called Deliverance. After learning that Xavier X Rodriguez may still be alive, they mount a rescue mission for the long-lost hero.
In the skies, the Hive is falling apart, but Captain Jordan is more determined than ever to keep humanity in their outdated lifeboat. He will do whatever it takes to keep the ship in the air-even murder. But when he learns the Hell Divers he exiled have found Deliverance, he changes course for a new mission-find the divers, kill them, and make their new ship his own.
In the third installment of the USA Today bestselling Hell Divers series, Michael and his fellow divers fight across the mutated landscape in search of X. But what they find will change everything.
#4
Wolves
2018
Listening time 9 hours 25 minutes
They dive so humanity survives. Now they take to the sea.
In the fourth installment of the award-winning and USA Today bestselling Hell Divers series, the Sea Wolf sets out to search for the Metal Islands. Leading the expedition is legendary Hell Diver Xavier Rodriguez. After enduring for a decade on the poisoned surface, his survival skills will be put to the test on the dangerous open seas. But storms, sea monsters, and the cannibalistic Cazadores aren’t the only threat to X and his small crew. Their mission will uncover hard truths about the history of the war that left humankind stranded in the air for centuries. And the fate of those still living on the airships might very well rest on this fragile and perilous journey to find a new home.
#5
Captives
2019
Humanity has finally found a new home, but the price is blood ...
After a long, perilous journey, Hell Divers Xavier Rodriguez and Magnolia Katib discover the Metal Islands, a sunny habitable zone where thousands of people live by fishing and farming. But this "paradise" is really a violent warrior society ruled by the cannibal king el Pulpo. For the first time in X's life, he is forced to lay down his arms and surrender.
Back on the airships, the Hell Divers are recovering from a gruesome discovery at Red Sphere, where they learned the truth about World War III. Now they must fight one last war-this time for what remains of their own endangered species. As the battle approaches, alliances will be forged, and others broken.
Forced to fight in the Cazador army, X faces his toughest mission yet. Will he help his people come down from the sky and claim the promised land, or will humanity go extinct?
#6
Allegiance
2019
The war for the Metal Islands is over, but the search for survivors has just begun.
After a long and bloody battle, legendary Hell Diver Xavier Rodriguez reigns as the dutiful but reluctant new king of the islands. Advised by a council of former sky citizens as well as Cazadores, he works to assimilate the two societies peacefully. But not all Cazadores have accepted the new order.
While X tries to ease tensions at home, a rookie team of divers, led by Michael Everhart, returns to the skies in Discovery, formerly the ITC Deliverance. Their mission: to locate other human survivors throughout the world and rescue them. But Michael s team aren t the only ones searching for survivors. A gruesome discovery reveals that android defectors continue to hunt humans across the globe. And they may not be the only ones.
In a race against time, the Hell Divers may be the only obstacle to enemies bent on wiping out the final pockets of survivors and extinguishing the human genome forever.
#7
Warriors
2020
The New York Times and USA Today bestselling series
While the Hell Divers cross an ocean to battle the machines, an old flesh-and-blood threat returns to the islands.
The mission to Rio de Janeiro ended in victory, but it came at a dire cost, killing most of those who set out to rescue the stranded survivors. Even worse, the skinwalkers' leader, Horn, escaped with his demonic crew and is coming to take the throne.
Back at the Vanguard Islands, King Xavier Rodriguez has been severely injured in another battle to protect the kingdom. Now an infection threatens to kill the one man who can keep the peace. As he fights for survival, new intel from Rio de Janeiro gives humanity hope of destroying the biggest threat of all: the machines—if the machines don't find the Vanguard Islands first.
#8
King of the Wastes
2021
Face the uncertain future without fear...
A year has passed since the Hell Divers defeated the machines at Kilimanjaro. The freed captives have settled into their new home at the Vanguard Islands, joining survivors from around the world. But extreme weather and failed crops have raised the specter of famine. Ships must push deeper into dangerous red zones, only to come back with less loot—and fewer soldiers.
When the Hell Divers discover a scroll on a raid, a long-buried truth comes to light, filling King Xavier with dread. The Vanguard Islands are not the salvation the sky people thought them to be. To survive, they must venture through the Panama Canal and into the wastes beyond.
With the fate of humanity at stake, the Immortal once again dons his armor. But there is a reason the great Cazador armies never returned from the canal, and this time not even the King of the Wastes is prepared for what awaits them.
#9
Radioactive
2022
New monsters. New terrain. New threats. Welcome to Australia.
The battle for Panama is over, and King Xavier Rodriguez secretly deploys the airship Vanguard to Queensland. The hunt for the Coral Castle is on. The rest of the fleet returns to the Vanguard Islands with new ships and supplies, but tensions rise with rumors of a hidden food cache.
When two sky people are murdered, Chief Michael Everhart knows the stage is set for mutiny. And with King Xavier off in search of the Coral Castle, he feels the target on his back. At Panama, a new leader emerges as an ancient evil threatens Outpost Gateway. The only hope of defeating it is a youth who has learned to survive in the deadly ruins.
On Australia's Sunshine Coast, King Xavier leads the search for the Coral Castle while Captain Rolo deploys the Hell Divers to hunt for a new source of seeds. As losses from both missions mount, the king wonders if finding this place is worth the cost. But turning back to the Vanguard Islands without a new food source could doom all humanity to starvation. Or to all-out war.
#10
Fallout
2023
Much is lost, but hope in one man remains...
In a shocking betrayal, Captain Rolo has vaporized the supercarrier Immortal with a nuclear warhead, all but wiping out the Vanguard army. Little does he know that King Xavier and the surviving Hell Diver and Cazador teams from Brisbane were not aboard.
In Panama, Outpost Gateway has suffered a very different disaster: attack by carnivorous vines. Director Rodger Mintel sent out a desperate SOS as the voracious coils ripped into the bunker.
At the Vanguard Islands, Charmer has framed Michael Everhart for two murders. Michael’s wife, Layla, is frantic to prove his innocence as evidence against him mounts.
Back in Queensland, knights of the Coral Castle dragged captive Hell Diver Kade Long to their leader, known as the Forerunner, before locking him in a cell in the Coral Castle.
The truth of what happened at Brisbane is spreading, and so is radiation from the nuclear blast. The fallout threatens everything in its path, putting the Coral Castle and X’s remaining forces in dire peril.
#11
Renegades
2023
The secret location of the Vanguard Islands is no longer a secret . . .
Tired from years of fighting, Xavier passes the crown to a younger Hell Diver, Kade Long, and then sets off on the Sea Wolf with Magnolia to find Michael and his family. But the journey will push them both to their limit.
On the damaged airship Vanguard, Michael and crew are running out of water and must dive to a new location before attempting the perilous voyage across the Atlantic to a new home. Back at the Vanguard Islands, King Kade hurries to prepare the rigs’ defenses against the Forerunner and his Knights of the Coral Castle. Fearing that X won’t return with the airship in time, Kade sends the elite Barracudas on a mission to find an aircraft that will give the Islands a fighting chance against the knights.
In the penultimate Hell Diver book, the survivors travel skewed and far-flung paths, but soon those paths will converge. The journey is almost over, so strap in for the last dives.
#12
Heroes
2024
The Forerunner has decimated the Vanguard Islands in a surprise attack from the Trident warship. King Kade Long—seeing no alternative—accepts a peace deal, committing to a perilous mission with X, the “Immortal,” to activate weather-modification reactors at the poles. But as Kade and X set off, the fragile peace is threatened by a one-man guerrilla war against the psychopathic knight, General Jack. Meanwhile, halfway across the world, Michael and his family begin to settle into their new life in the Canary Islands, only to discover that it’s not the sanctuary they believed it was.
Diving into the most inhospitable territory yet, the Hell Divers face horrific monsters bred for a single to keep them out at any cost. Their only hope of defeating them and restoring the planet is for enemies to unite behind the Immortal and finally work together. But with blood being shed back home, these heroes may have nothing left to save.
In this final Hell Divers book, beloved characters will confront their fates in a desperate bid to resurrect the world, though not all will live to see the dawn of a new era.
Author
Nicholas Sansbury Smith
Author · 54 books
Nicholas Sansbury Smith is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Hell Divers series. His other work includes the Extinction Cycle series, the Trackers series, and the Orbs series. He worked for Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management in disaster planning and mitigation before switching careers to focus on his one true passion—writing. When he isn't writing or daydreaming about the apocalypse, he enjoys running, biking, spending time with his family, and traveling the world. He is an Ironman triathlete and lives in Iowa with his wife, their dogs, and a house full of books. Sign up for Nicholas' spam-free newsletter to learn more about future releases, how to claim a book patch, special offers, and bonus content. Subscribers will also receive access to exclusive giveaways. eepurl.com/bggNg9 Note: Nicholas is no longer an active user on Goodreads and does not use the platform. If you want to connect with him on social media here are some links. He would love to hear from you. Facebook Fan Club: https://www.facebook.com/groups/NSSFa... Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/nicholassans... Twitter: twitter.com/greatwaveink Website: nicholassansburysmith.com Instagram: instagram.com/author_sansbury/
