A Sea of Spectres

On the choppy coastline of Prince Edward Island, an ocean-phobic detective evades the deadly lure of a phantom ship by delving into her family's history and harnessing her matrilineal powers of premonition.

Raina is an accomplished detective working against smugglers and traffickers on PEI, and she's eager for an imminent promotion. But there's a catch: she has to go work on a Coast Guard ship for a week. And Raina, though Island born and raised, loathes the sea. When she gets too close to it, the phantom ship starts calling to her, and the lure of its deadly cold flames threatens to overwhelm her.

When she starts pulling the threads of a missing-person case, she discovers how Doiron women's uncanny abilities have impacted her ancestral line: Madeleine's powers tried to keep her family safe during the Expulsion of the Acadians in 1758; Celeste's tempted her to take back what was rightfully hers in 1864. Generation after generation of women have had to reckon with what their abilities can and can't do to protect their families. And now it's Raina's turn. Is she strong enough to carry her family's legacy? Or will that legacy carry her out into the burning sea of spectres? Debut novelist Nancy Taber deftly braids three timelines together, each as engaging and fully drawn as the other. With whip-smart contemporary dialogue and moving, evocative historical writing, she brings to life three different generations of Acadian women in a riveting, crackling, chilling mystery.