Michael C Grumley Books in Order
See every Michael C Grumley book in order, with short summaries, series overviews, and clear where to start suggestions across his techno thrillers, mysteries, and near future adventures.
Last updated: December 23, 2025
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Publication Order
16 books
The Circle
by Michael C Grumley
2026
In the third Rollback novel, Mike Mansfield faces the full consequences of a world where almost every moment is recorded and can be reconstructed. With powerful players closing ranks around the surveillance system he helped expose, he must decide how much he is willing to risk to break their circle of control.
The Mirage
by Michael C Grumley
2025
Mike Mansfield and his invisibles agree to help a family understand a supposedly straightforward tragedy, only to find an official story built to mislead. As they dig past the comforting narrative, Mansfield realizes he is being watched and that the truth behind the case threatens people who will gladly erase him to keep it buried.
Rollback
by Michael C Grumley
2025
Mike Mansfield has spent years quietly finding people no one else can, helped by a loose network of watchers he calls invisibles. When billionaire David Bruni's new supercomputer exposes the hidden trick behind Mansfield's success, the two men and an INTERPOL agent are pulled into a dangerous experiment in global surveillance and justice.
Cold Storage
by Michael C Grumley
2025
On the run after escaping the program that brought him back from death, John Reiff wakes in a battered ambulance with his altered body betraying him. Hunted by a powerful organization guarding a centuries old secret, he must uncover what was kept on ice and why his survival terrifies them.
Deep Freeze
by Michael C Grumley
2024
Army veteran John Reiff dies when a bus plunges into a frozen river, then awakens in a high tech facility where doctors insist everything is fine. As his memories return, he realizes he is the first successful subject of a cryonics experiment and that the people who revived him are hiding far too much.
The Desert of Glass
by Michael C Grumley
2021
Armed with raw data from one of the first orbiting satellites, Joe Rickards and anthropologist Angela Reed trace a three thousand year old anomaly hidden in plain sight. As they enlist a retired NASA engineer and close in on the truth, they discover others have been quietly exploiting the same secret for years.
Echo
by Michael C Grumley
2021
After years of decoding alien technology and bridging human and animal minds, Alison Shaw and John Clay face their most dangerous choice yet, as a final discovery forces three linked species to decide how far they will go to protect one another.
The Last Monument
by Michael C Grumley
2020
Investigating a baffling small plane crash in snowy Colorado, NTSB investigator Joe Rickards uncovers a decades old letter that should never have reached its recipient. Teaming up with the victim's granddaughter, he follows its trail into a web of wartime secrets with consequences for the entire world.
Mosaic
by Michael C Grumley
2019
With the world sliding toward open conflict, Clay, Alison, and their scattered allies hold a single discovery that could pull humanity back from the brink. As governments close in, they must decide who can be trusted with a secret that could reshape the planet.
Ripple
by Michael C Grumley
2017
New evidence of alternate human evolutionary branches and an impossible plant with astonishing healing power send Clay and Alison to Africa. Racing rival powers and buried alien technology, they search for the source before it is weaponized or erased.
The Unexpected Hero
by Michael C Grumley
2015
Still recovering from his earlier ordeal, Evan Nash tries to live a normal life while his visions grow stronger and more costly. Driven by a fierce sense of right and wrong, he throws himself into saving others even as his fragile health and powerful enemies close in.
Catalyst
by Michael C Grumley
2015
A second seed vault, hidden far from the Arctic and clearly not built by humans, is uncovered and placed under Alison Shaw and John Clay's protection. Inside lie millions of alien genetic samples and the truth about why our own species evolved at all.
Leap
by Michael C Grumley
2014
A year after their first breakthrough with dolphin communication, Alison Shaw's team prepares to unveil a new advance just as an experimental Russian submarine resurfaces off South America. Sent to investigate, John Clay discovers soldiers vanishing into the jungle chasing something the whole world will want.
Evan After / Through the Fog
by Michael C Grumley
2014
After a bike accident leaves him with a dangerous neurological condition, eighteen year old Evan Nash begins seeing vivid scenes whenever he falls asleep. Psychiatrist Shannon Mayer doubts him until his visions start matching details from her kidnapped daughter's case and they must decide how much risk to demand of him.
Breakthrough
by Michael C Grumley
2013
Naval investigator John Clay follows a crippled submarine's strange failure to a Caribbean research lab where Alison Shaw is on the verge of true two way communication with dolphins. When the animals reveal a buried object no one can explain, they race to prevent a disaster spanning ocean and ice.
Amid the Shadows
by Michael C Grumley
2013
A six year old girl named Sarah can see things no one else can, a talent that makes her the target of people who want to use or destroy her. When inexperienced social worker Christine Rose takes Sarah into her care, she stumbles into a centuries old battle and must fight to keep the child alive.
Where should I start?
If you want science driven ocean techno thrillers: Breakthrough → Leap → Catalyst
For a paranormal mystery with an emotional edge: Through the Fog → The Unexpected Hero
For globe trotting artifact adventure: The Last Monument → The Desert of Glass
For near future immortality thrillers: Deep Freeze → Cold Storage
For high tech surveillance investigations: Rollback → The Mirage → The Circle
Author bio
Michael C. Grumley writes the kind of techno thrillers he once went looking for on the shelf and could not quite find. His stories blend cutting edge science, high stakes action, and very human characters, usually pushed far past what they thought they could handle.
He lives in Northern California, where he balances a career in information technology with the quieter work of outlining plots and revising chapters. Away from the keyboard he is an avid reader and runner, and most of all a hands on dad to his two daughters.
For years he treated writing as a long range goal rather than a day job. After work hours he studied story structure, tinkered with ideas that mixed mystery and science, and slowly built the confidence to try the big, fast books he kept imagining.
When Breakthrough appeared in 2013, that private plan became very public.
For many readers Breakthrough is still the starting point. The novel follows marine biologist Alison Shaw and navy investigator John Clay as a project to communicate with dolphins uncovers mysterious technology on the ocean floor and a threat that runs from the Caribbean to Antarctica. Over the next five books, including Leap, Catalyst, Ripple, Mosaic, and Echo, Grumley keeps widening that world with alien artifacts, evolutionary surprises, and questions about what intelligence really means. The series has sold well over a million copies and helped put his name on the techno thriller map.
Alongside the ocean based science fiction, he writes grounded thrillers with a paranormal or historical twist. The Evan After novels, beginning with Through the Fog, follow teenager Evan Nash, whose visions may be the only way to save a kidnapped child. Amid the Shadows centers on a young girl with an unsettling gift, a conspiracy that stretches back through history, and one social worker who refuses to walk away. His Monument books, starting with The Last Monument and The Desert of Glass, send an aviation accident investigator chasing a long buried letter, Cold War era secrets, and relics that could rewrite what we think we know about the past.
More recently the Revival series, with Deep Freeze and Cold Storage, pushes into the near future, asking what might happen if cryonic revival actually worked and one wounded veteran woke up in the center of a vast experiment on human immortality. The Rollback novels introduce Mike Mansfield, a dogged investigator whose cases collide with a global surveillance system stitched together from billions of everyday images. In both series, Grumley uses big speculative ideas to talk about trust, power, and the cost of second chances.
His background in information technology shows up everywhere in the details, from supercomputers quietly crunching satellite data to believable talk of encryption, genetics, and surveillance systems.
Grumley is open about the learning curve behind those details and about the long, slow work of building a readership as an independent author. He now splits his time between drafting new stories, talking with other writers about self publishing and marketing, and trying to make sure every new book moves just a little faster than the last.
Edited by
Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.
Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.


































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