Ghosting: A Novel - Hardcover

Poyer, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312613024 ISBN 13: 9780312613020

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2010

Synopsis

Dr. Jack Scales, a prominent neurosurgeon, is at the peak of his career. To celebrate, he decides to make up for lost time and buys a sailing yacht christened Slow Dance, for a family cruise to Bermuda. But the family is strained: Jack’s wife Arlen is secretly considering leaving the marriage; Rick, their bipolar twenty-year-old son, may need to be committed to a group home; Haley, a rebellious teenager, would rather be anywhere but trapped on a boat with her family; and Jack himself is not prepared for the challenge of the open sea.

Day by day, the Scales face mounting dangers. A lightning storm nearly destroys the boat, Rick’s unstable condition worsens, and both Arlen and Haley realize that Jack is in over his head. Still, emerging from the storm, they find a fragile unity...until a man adrift on a raft leads them into danger against a terrifying gang of smugglers, who will stop at nothing to gain control of Slow Dance.

Filled with an expert seaman’s knowledge and driven by conflicted characters, Ghosting is a new direction for an established author: a thrilling adventure as unpredictable as the sea itself.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

A seafaring family is pitted against an epic storm, a deadly enemy, and each other in this tense, twisting thriller from bestselling author

David Poyer

Dr. Jack Scales, hotshot neurosurgeon, is at the peak of his career—and his family’s showing the strain. His wife, Arlen, is having an affair; Ric, their twenty-year-old son, hears voices urging him to violence; and teenaged Haley, a champion swimmer, would rather be anywhere than on a cruise to Bermuda in her family’s luxurious new sailboat...

“Thrilling and dynamic.”—Library Journal

The Scales’s bon voyage party ends in the death of a stowaway, a lightning storm that nearly sinks them, and one of Ric’s worst schizophrenic episodes yet. Still, battling the elements together, the family forges a fragile unity...until a man adrift on a plastic beach float hundreds of miles from land springs a trap. Held hostage by smugglers who’ll stop at nothing to get their cargo to port, the family faces the ultimate question: How much would each one be willing to sacrifice in order to buy the others a chance to survive?

“Heart of Darkness meets The Perfect Storm...Packs the punch of a Category Five. Never for one second could I put this one down!” —Andrew Gross, New York Times bestselling author of Reckless

About the Author:

DAVID POYER’s thirty-year career included service in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Arctic, Caribbean, Pacific, the Pentagon, and the Mideast. He has written eighteen Navy and sea novels, as well as sailing and nautical articles for Chesapeake Bay Magazine, Southern Boating, Shipmate, Tidewater Virginian and other periodicals. His work is required reading in the Literature of the Sea course at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, along with that of Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville. He lives on Virginia’s Eastern Shore with his wife and their daughter, with whom he explores the Bay and Atlantic coast in their sloop, Water Spirit.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0312613024
• ISBN 13: 9780312613020
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304