James H Cobb Books in Order

If you want the full Amanda Garrett arc: Choosers of the Slain → Storm Dragon / Sea Strike → Sea Fighter → Target Lock → Phantom Force
If you want a faster sample of his naval thrillers: Choosers of the Slain → Storm Dragon / Sea Strike → Sea Fighter
If you want a road mystery: West On 66
If you want secret-agency suspense: Robert Ludlum's The Arctic Event
If you want science fiction: Cibola

James H. Cobb was born in Tacoma, Washington, on February 18, 1953, and spent most of his life in that part of the state. He graduated from Lincoln High School in 1972, then from the University of Puget Sound in 1976 with a degree in business administration and English. As a boy, he loved time on his uncle's ranch in Eastern Washington, and that mix of open country, machinery, and western history stayed with him.

Cobb did not come to publishing by a neat, straight path. Before his novels found a wide audience, he worked as a ranch hand, truck dispatcher, disc jockey, bookstore manager, and theater manager. Those jobs gave him a broad feel for people and rhythm, and his fiction often has that lived-in sense of real work happening inside big, dangerous plots.

He came to novel writing later than many authors do.

What pushed his books into view was a deep interest in military history and technology, plus the fact that he came from a Navy family. That background helped shape Choosers of the Slain in 1996, the first Amanda Garrett novel. It introduced a smart, steady naval officer commanding the stealth destroyer USS Cunningham, and readers stayed with her through Sea Strike, Sea Fighter, Target Lock, and, later, Phantom Force.

Amanda Garrett became his signature character.

The appeal of those books is easy to see. Cobb liked hardware, tactics, and geopolitical pressure points, but he also cared about command decisions, crew loyalty, and the strain of being the person who has to choose when every option is bad. His stories move from Antarctica to the waters off Taiwan, then to West Africa and Indonesia, always keeping one eye on the map and the other on the people trying to survive the mission.

He did not stay in one lane, though. West on 66 turned toward crime fiction and the old American highway, following deputy sheriff Kevin Pulaski through a chase tied to mob money and a woman in trouble. Cibola stepped into science fiction, with Free Marshal Gain Chandry pulled into a high-risk asteroid-mining project in the 22nd century. In 2007, Cobb also wrote Robert Ludlum's The Arctic Event, bringing his practical, action-heavy style to the Covert-One world of secret operations, bioweapons, and international conspiracy.

Short fiction mattered to him as well. He published stories in anthologies and magazines, including work in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and he spent a lot of time helping other writers, whether that meant convention panels, mentoring, or working with a critique group. By all accounts, he was generous with his time and serious about story.

Away from the desk, he loved classic cars, big personal libraries, ghost stories, firearms, science fiction, and the backroads of the American West. He traveled in a 1960 Thunderbird he called Lisette, collected books in serious numbers, and seems to have enjoyed poking around both history and odd corners of the world with the same curiosity he brought to fiction.

In his later years he moved to the rural Tenino area, south of Tacoma, while Washington remained home. He died on July 8, 2014, at his home in Olympia after living with lymphoma for five years. The bibliography is not huge, but it is varied, energetic, and easy to remember once you have read a couple of titles.