Black Gold Secret begins with a dead offshore rig, an old family loss, and evidence someone has worked hard to keep underwater. It also begins a larger story.
The Mercer Files follows three brothers through three connected cases. Each book has its own lead pair, setting, and central investigation. The conspiracy continues across the series, but every installment delivers a complete suspense story of its own.
Book Two: The Lost Claim
The Lost Claim shifts the action from the Gulf Coast to Queensland, Australia. Noah Mercer expects to assess the latest thread in his family’s investigation and leave. Contract archivist Lori Callahan has already found something harder to dismiss: an altered mining record and a family claim that may have been deliberately erased.
Old workings, Outback roads, survey markers, and mining records give this book a different landscape from Black Gold Secret. The danger is different too. Lori and Noah aren’t searching beneath the water. They’re following a paper trail into ground someone doesn’t want disturbed.
A lost claim. A buried fraud. A money trail someone will kill to erase.
Book Three: The Iron Vault
The final Mercer brother steps forward in The Iron Vault. Eli Mercer is used to analyzing danger from a distance. Rosalie Tanaka knows how to spot numbers that don’t balance. In the Pacific Northwest, they must find the archive that connects the cases before the evidence disappears for good.
This is where the separate trails begin to converge. The oil rig, the Australian claim, and the financial records all point toward proof that has survived because people protected it, documented it, and refused to let it vanish quietly.
A locked archive. A final lie. A conspiracy running out of places to hide.
Where the trail begins
You will be able to read each Mercer Files book for its central case and characters. If you want to follow the full family investigation from the beginning, start with Black Gold Secret, featuring Luke Mercer and investigative reporter Gemma Klein.
Black Gold Secret releases September 8. The Lost Claim is planned for September 29, followed by The Iron Vault on October 20. You can preorder Black Gold Secret on Amazon now.
Which setting pulls you in first: an offshore rig, the Australian Outback, or a locked archive in the Pacific Northwest?