David Nees Books in Order

If you want post-apocalyptic survival: Jason's Tale → Uprising → Rescue
If you want Jason's story to turn darker and bigger: Undercover → Escape
If you want revenge and covert action: Payback → The Shaman → The Captive Girl → The Assassin and the Pianist
If you want Dan Stone at a bigger global scale: Death in the Congo → The Scorpion → Rogue Mission → The Revenger
If you want Catherine's side of the story: Catherine's Tale, Part 1 → Catherine's Tale, Part 2

David Nees came to fiction after several other careers, and that late start matters to the feel of his books. Before he was publishing novels, he studied psychology at Ohio Wesleyan University, earned a master's degree in education through the Teacher Corps, and taught school in Virginia. He did the classroom years first, long before he sat down to build worlds on the page.

Then motorcycles took over. Nees left teaching, opened a Yamaha dealership in the Tysons Corner area, and raced from the mid-1970s into 1985. He has said that racing was exciting, but at six foot four he was not exactly built for it, which tells you something about his willingness to try things anyway.

Business became the next chapter. Alongside the dealership, he built a fitness equipment company that eventually grew into a 27 store regional chain. For decades his life was about customers, staff, expansion, and the practical math of keeping things moving.

Writing arrived later, during a rough stretch.

After tax problems and the 2008 recession pushed his business into bankruptcy, Nees read heavily to manage the stress. One of the books that stuck with him was a dystopian novel about an electromagnetic pulse attack. He sketched out a 20 page synopsis of his own idea, sent it to his sister, an English teacher, and got the answer he needed. Yes, this could be a book. Rather than wait around for a traditional publishing path, he self-published and began writing full time after stepping away from the business world.

That first novel became After the Fall: Jason's Tale, the start of a post-apocalyptic story about survival, family, and rebuilding after an EMP attack. He followed it with Uprising, Rescue, Undercover, and later Escape, expanding Jason's world from mountain refuge to town politics and larger power struggles. He also wrote the two Catherine's Tale books, which revisit part of that same world from a different angle. Readers who like these novels usually come for the danger, but stay for the settlement building, the hard choices, and the sense that ordinary people are trying to keep a moral center.

Then he changed gears again.

With Payback, Nees moved into the Dan Stone thrillers. Those books send a former Army sniper and covert assassin through revenge plots, desert survival, kidnappings, bombings, and international missions in books like The Shaman, The Captive Girl, Death in the Congo, and The Orphan Girl. Even when the settings get bigger, from Brooklyn to Mexico to the Middle East and Central Africa, the core tension stays personal. Dan Stone is not a slick super-spy. He is a working guy with dangerous skills, and the series keeps asking what violence does to a person who would rather have a normal life.

Across both major series, Nees seems most interested in people under pressure. His heroes are capable, but they are not cool machines. They get tired, angry, loyal, stubborn, and sometimes pulled between conscience and necessity. He has said that he usually starts with an outline, but the characters do not always stay inside it, which fits the feeling of the books themselves. They are plotted thrillers, yes, but they are also stories about people improvising when plans break down.

These days he lives with his wife in Virginia, on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, and writes full time. When he is not working on the next book, he has said he can often be found sailing his A Class catamaran. It is a fitting present for someone whose road to fiction ran through classrooms, racetracks, and decades in business.