“As I watch the wake of the boat melt into the rolling waves, I feel I’m watching my entire past slip away behind me. Only the present remains. The terrible, poisoned present…”

***NOTE FROM THE AUTHORS: A previous version of this novel was published as Fishermen’s Court (Black Rose Writing, 2019). It has been substantively edited and revised for this publication.

I’m a second-rate artist living a solitary existence in my late parents’ rundown house. So why would a team of killers want to murder me and frame it as a suicide? Seems a fact worth knowing.

I survive the ordeal only to discover my would-be executioners left behind a suicide note written in words that sound uncannily like mine. But that’s not the most disturbing part. The note reveals a secret from my past nobody could possibly know about—one that’s been haunting my life for eighteen years.

I escape to Musqasset Island, Maine, my former home, to seek refuge with my best friend Miles (and okay, maybe to see if my old flame still carries an ember for me). But a powerful coastal storm is about to strike. And no sooner does the ferry dock than I realize I’m trapped on the island with the very psychos I’m running from—and with old debts that need to be paid. In O negative.

My only hope for survival, and redemption, is to figure out who’s trying to kill me and why they’ve waited eighteen years to act—no easy task in a raging nor’easter, where nothing is on solid ground. Including my own mind.

But there’s one thing my attackers don’t know. When they failed to kill me, they brought me back to life.