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FEATURED TITLE
The Ransom Line · Cole Hardin Book 5
PUBLISHED WORK · FIVE NOVELS
The Cole Hardin series
Espionage fiction by Joshua Jacobson, presented in reading order.
RECOMMENDED STARTING POINT · BOOK ONE
Begin at the beginning.
Start with The Hole in the Ocean and follow the series in reading order.
STANDALONE FICTION · OUTSIDE THE SERIES
The Cull
A SMARTER MACHINE BUILT A BIGGER BUSINESS. THEN IT THREW AWAY WHAT COULD HAVE SAVED US.
Jack Mercer gives an AI agent the keys to his late father's freight business. The agent's discards may be the only defense when Mimic starts draining the platform.
A THRILLER FOR A WORLD THAT LETS MACHINES DECIDE WHAT LIVES ON.
Discover the bookCole Hardin series · reader archive
The Hardin File
Five missions. A more dangerous world.
Open a file for spoiler-free mission briefings, story locations, and the pressure points closing around Cole Hardin.
File 01 Cole Hardin series
Fictional intelligence archive
The Hole in the Ocean
SOME SECRETS ARE BURIED FOR A REASON. OTHERS WERE NEVER MEANT TO BE FOUND.
Mission briefing
In Trieste, CIA officer Cole Hardin finds a murdered information broker and a number that should not exist outside a classified program. Three days later, a U.S. Navy vessel vanishes in the Gulf of Oman. The official account arrives quickly; the questions stop even faster.
Hardin follows evidence through shipyards and defense contractors as access narrows and geopolitical pressure builds. He must find out what happened before his search puts the people he means to protect in danger.
Pressure points
A murdered broker leaves behind one unexplained number tied to a classified program.
A Navy vessel disappears in the Gulf of Oman, and the explanation arrives before the questions can be asked.
Evidence across shipyards and defense contractors points toward consequences larger than one missing ship.
Field notes
Story-grounded details beyond the mission brief.
The free-port city
Trieste’s Porto Franco lets goods sit in bonded warehouses and be repacked before they move on—a detail that gives the port’s ordinary trade an opaque edge.
A report with blanks
The missing-vessel notice gives no name, flag, tonnage, type, or last known position: basic identifiers Hardin expects to see in a naval report.
Locations of interest
Trieste
The investigation opens with the murder of an information broker in a dim stairwell.
Gulf of Oman
A U.S. Navy vessel vanishes three days after the Trieste murder.
People in this file
- CIA officer
Cole Hardin
Follows the broker’s clue as the Navy vessel disappears.
- Broker
Information broker
Murdered in Trieste, leaving one detail tied to a classified program.
Selected file 01: The Hole in the Ocean
THE SHIMMERROCK TRANSMISSION
Stories can travel further.
Publishing is the foundation. Selected published properties are being evaluated for film and television, with other-media licensing considered where story, audience, and available rights align.
01
Original fiction. Built to last.
Shimmerrock publishes original fiction across the Cole Hardin espionage-thriller series and standalone novels.
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