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David Mack Books in Order

Browse David Mack books in order, from Star Trek epics to Dark Arts, with short summaries, series guides, and simple recommendations on where to start.

Last updated: July 7, 2026

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47 books

Invincible, Part 1

by David Mack

2001

The *da Vinci* faces a seemingly unstoppable threat that cannot be solved by brute force alone. What begins as a technical puzzle quickly turns into a fight for survival.

Invincible, Part 2

by David Mack

2001

With the crisis escalating, the engineers have to turn theory into a last-ditch plan. The second half pays off the mystery with higher stakes and very little margin for error.

The Starfleet Survival Guide

by David Mack

2002

This in-universe manual offers a smart, playful crash course in uniforms, away missions, starships, and the unwritten rules of not getting yourself killed in Starfleet.

Wildfire

by David Mack

2002

A Starfleet engineering mission turns into a claustrophobic disaster when the *da Vinci* crew is trapped in a failing environment. Every fix creates a new risk, and time is not on their side.

Buying Time

by David Mack

2003

Another Corps of Engineers emergency becomes a race against collapse, where each repair only delays the next failure. It is a fast technical crisis built around problem-solving under pressure.

Wildfire Book 2

by David Mack

2003

The disaster deepens, escape routes narrow, and the *da Vinci* crew has to keep thinking while the environment turns deadly. This second part finishes one of Mack's most intense engineering stories.

A Time to Heal

by David Mack

2004

In the wake of the previous crisis, Picard and his crew try to steady a damaged situation without losing themselves in the process. It is a direct follow-up about recovery, duty, and hard compromises.

A Time to Kill

by David Mack

2004

The *Enterprise-E* faces a volatile frontier crisis where diplomacy and force are both risky. Picard must split his attention between political danger, crew strain, and a situation that keeps getting worse.

Failsafe

by David Mack

2004

When an observation probe crashes on a pre-warp world, the Corps of Engineers must destroy it before local terrorists turn stolen technology into a weapon. A clean repair job becomes a cultural crisis.

Harbinger

by David Mack

2005

Kirk's *Enterprise* stops at Starbase 47, Vanguard, and quickly learns the Taurus Reach is anything but routine frontier space. Rival powers, secret agendas, and ancient mysteries make a volatile beginning.

Small World

by David Mack

2005

The *da Vinci* crew encounters a civilization that has literally miniaturized its own world to survive. Helping them means solving one of the strangest engineering problems in the series.

Warpath

by David Mack

2006

After attacking Kira and Ro, Taran'atar escapes Deep Space 9 with Prynn Tenmei as a hostage. Vaughn and the *Defiant* give chase while old wounds open across the whole station.

Glass Empires

by David Mack

2007

This Mirror Universe collection moves across multiple eras of a darker Star Trek reality, from imperial power games to rebellion and survival. It is a broad, grim tour of how twisted this timeline can get.

Reap the Whirlwind

by David Mack

2007

The Taurus Reach grows more unstable as frontier politics, military pressure, and older secrets start feeding one another. *Vanguard* shifts from tense outpost drama into a much larger regional crisis.

Gods of Night

by David Mack

2008

The Borg return in force, and the Federation may be facing extinction. Far away, the discovery of a dead Earth ship on an empty world hints that the answers lie deep in the past.

Lost Souls

by David Mack

2008

The Borg war reaches its breaking point, and Picard, Riker, and Dax each face choices that could cost everything. This finale aims for survival, sacrifice, and the true meaning of the trilogy's title.

Mere Mortals

by David Mack

2008

As Earth braces for invasion, Picard and Dax race to cut off the Borg advance while Riker encounters the reclusive Caeliar. The middle *Destiny* book widens the war and the mystery behind it.

Precipice

by David Mack

2009

Operation Vanguard is in chaos. Quinn finds an ancient Shedai conduit, Pennington and T'Prynn chase a desperate lead, and Diego Reyes learns his enemies may not be the people holding him prisoner.

Promises Broken

by David Mack

2009

Promicin is spreading, Promise City is under pressure, and the world keeps moving toward open conflict. This *4400* continuation turns social panic and superhuman politics into a final reckoning.

The Calling

by David Mack

2009

Tom Nash hears prayers that demand action, and one desperate plea sends him from small-town Pennsylvania to New York City. A kidnapped girl, a shaken marriage, and a supernatural gift push him into danger.

The Sorrows of Empire

by David Mack

2010

Mirror Spock becomes emperor and tries to reform a system built on fear and blood. The result is part political thriller, part tragic study of how hard it is to civilize an empire.

Zero Sum Game

by David Mack

2010

As the Typhon Pact rises, Bashir and Sarina infiltrate the Breen on a mission where failure could redraw the balance of power. Ezri Dax and the *Aventine* crew back a plan with no safe outcome.

Declassified

by David Mack

2011

This *Vanguard* collection fills in key gaps around the larger saga with missions, reports, and side stories from across the Taurus Reach. It is a useful way to see how the big plot affects everyone else.

Rise Like Lions

by David Mack

2011

In the Mirror Universe, Smiley O'Brien and his exhausted rebels make a last stand against the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance. Victory, if it comes at all, will be brutal and costly.

Silent Weapons

by David Mack

2012

A hidden danger linked to old research and older mistakes threatens to become a catastrophe. Picard has to untangle conspiracy, science, and grief before a secret weapon claims new victims.

Storming Heaven

by David Mack

2012

Vanguard is under siege, and the *Sagittarius* is sent after an ancient weapon that might stop the Shedai. The final *Vanguard* novel turns frontier intrigue into all-out endgame.

The Persistence of Memory

by David Mack

2012

A baffling crisis forces Picard and the *Enterprise* crew to question memory, loss, and what reality they can trust. The first *Cold Equations* novel turns an abstract mystery into something painfully personal.

A Ceremony of Losses

by David Mack

2013

The Andorians are running out of time, and every power bloc wants to exploit their crisis. Bashir risks his career and freedom to find a cure before politics finishes what biology started.

The Body Electric

by David Mack

2013

A crisis tied to artificial life and long-buried secrets forces Picard to confront questions of identity, responsibility, and what counts as personhood. It is a high-stakes finish to the *Cold Equations* trilogy.

Disavowed

by David Mack

2014

Bashir and Sarina Douglas go after Section 31 in the aftermath of *The Fall*. The deeper they dig, the clearer it becomes that exposing the truth could destabilize far more than one covert agency.

Second Nature

by David Mack

2014

The *Sagittarius* and *Endeavour* head into the Taurus Reach and find the Tomol, a species whose children die just before adulthood. Trying to help them means surviving both the planet and Kang.

Long Shot

by David Mack

2015

The *Sagittarius* finds an alien world where experiments with unstable technology have broken the laws of probability. Disasters and miracles start happening nonstop, and the odds keep getting worse.

Rogue

by David Mack

2015

Jack Bauer, now a fugitive without a country, infiltrates an arms dealer's freighter off Somalia. When pirates seize the ship, he discovers a secret cargo that could ignite a world war.

Best Defense

by David Mack

2016

Kirk and the *Enterprise* are drawn into a dangerous mission whose roots reach back into Starfleet's past. Buried history, old enemies, and a larger mystery drive the middle act of the *Legacies* trilogy.

Control

by David Mack

2017

Julian Bashir uncovers a two-century-old secret that could finally expose Section 31. To destroy the organization, he may have to trigger consequences that cost him more than he can bear.

Desperate Hours

by David Mack

2017

Newly promoted Michael Burnham faces her first major test aboard the *Shenzhou* when an ancient threat endangers a Federation colony. Georgiou and Pike must work together before thousands die.

Fortune of War

by David Mack

2017

Abandoned Husnock worlds are full of terrifying technology, and too many factions want it. Riker, Vale, and the *Titan* crew become the thin line between a salvage rush and a quadrant-wide disaster.

The Midnight Front

by David Mack

2018

After Nazi sorcerers murder his family, Cade Martin joins the Allies' secret magical warfare program to strike back. World War II becomes a much darker battleground once every spell comes with a demonic price.

Collateral Damage

by David Mack

2019

Picard is called back to Earth to answer for a buried political scandal while Worf commands the Enterprise against pirates and stolen Husnock tech. Past sins and present emergencies collide fast.

The Iron Codex

by David Mack

2019

The war is over, but the magical damage is not. Former allies and old enemies race across the Cold War world for a legendary grimoire that could reshape the balance of power.

More Beautiful Than Death

by David Mack

2020

Kirk escorts Sarek to the planet Akiron and finds a world under attack by dark-energy creatures some locals call demons. While Kirk tries to save the colony, a Vulcan aide aboard the Enterprise may be planning Spock's death.

The Shadow Commission

by David Mack

2020

Cold War magicians uncover a secret cabal tied to the Kennedy assassination and a much larger demonic conspiracy. Old enemies return, hidden powers move in the dark, and the cost of victory keeps rising.

Oblivion's Gate

by David Mack

2021

As timelines unravel and whole histories begin to vanish, Picard and the surviving crews race for one last answer. The final Coda novel turns a collapsing reality into a desperate farewell.

Harm's Way

by David Mack

2022

Kirk and the *Enterprise* are pulled into a dangerous frontier crisis tied to the Taurus Reach and the long shadow of *Vanguard*. What starts as a mission turns into politics, action, and unfinished business.

Firewall

by David Mack

2024

Denied both Starfleet and easy belonging, Seven of Nine heads into a lawless region and finds the Fenris Rangers. Her new life begins with infiltration, corruption, and a brutal lesson in frontier justice.

Ring of Fire

by David Mack

2025

Pike's *Enterprise* heads to Kathara Station, a secret facility above a black hole, after murder and sabotage threaten a critical mission. Old wounds, hidden agendas, and crew tensions all flare at once.

New

Echoes in Eternity

by David Mack

2026

Three lives become entangled across twenty-seven years and three missions to a barren world that can be reached only at rare intervals between two black holes. It promises a long-view Star Trek mystery with real emotional weight.

Where should I start?

If you want a huge Star Trek event: Gods of NightMere MortalsLost Souls
If you want frontier exploration and long-form continuity: HarbingerReap the WhirlwindPrecipiceStorming Heaven
If you want spy-heavy Trek: Zero Sum GameDisavowedControl
If you want original dark fantasy: The Midnight FrontThe Iron CodexThe Shadow Commission
If you want a newer character-focused entry point: Desperate HoursCollateral DamageFirewall

Author bio

David Mack grew up in western Massachusetts, where Star Trek reruns were part of the background noise of childhood. He has said he fell for the franchise as a toddler, and what stayed with him was not just the hardware of starships and phasers, but the hopeful idea behind it, the sense that people could choose to build something better.

That stuck.

Around the age of fifteen, he got serious about screenwriting and filmmaking. He went on to study at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts from 1987 to 1991, focusing on screenwriting, film, and television production. While he was there, he also wrote for the student humor magazine The Plague, which feels like a good clue to his later work, big stakes, sharp plotting, and a willingness to let personality cut through the tension.

His route into professional writing was steady rather than sudden. In the 1990s he wrote spec scripts and tried to break into television, eventually teaming up with editor John J. Ordover. Together they sold an unused story to Star Trek: Voyager, then later landed the story that became the Deep Space Nine episode Starship Down. Another pitch from that same period eventually became It's Only a Paper Moon, which gave Mack and Ordover story credit there as well.

Prose fiction opened up through the same orbit. Freelance editorial work for Pocket Books led to Mack writing a short fictional supplement for The Genesis Wave, and that in turn led to his first full-length Star Trek novels. Early work such as Wildfire, A Time to Kill, and A Time to Heal showed how comfortable he was with crews under pressure, technical problems with human fallout, and stories where the action matters because the people do.

He likes large systems under stress.

A lot of readers know him best for event-scale Trek fiction. The Destiny trilogy turned the Borg into a full civilizational crisis. Cold Equations took classic The Next Generation ideas and pushed them into stranger, sadder territory. The Vanguard books, which he helped develop, built out an entire frontier region with its own politics, secrets, and long-running consequences. Even when his casts are huge and the stakes get cosmic, his stories usually come back to duty, loyalty, and what decent people do when institutions start to crack.

He has never stayed only in one lane. Outside Star Trek, he wrote the supernatural thriller The Calling and later launched the Dark Arts novels with The Midnight Front, mixing World War II history, espionage, and demon-powered magic. He has also written across comics, games, film, and television, which helps explain why his books often feel so visual and so driven by scene-to-scene momentum.

That cross-media side of his career kept growing.

He later worked as a consultant on Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Prodigy, and in 2022 the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers honored him as a Grandmaster with the Faust Award. Today he lives in New York City with his wife, Kara. If you start with Desperate Hours, Firewall, or More Beautiful Than Death, you will get a clean sample of his later style. If you dive into Destiny or Vanguard, you will see just how much he enjoys going big.

Edited by

Richard Reis

Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.

Anurag Ramdasan

Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.

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