Drowning Echoes

The island has a long memory. It doesn't care for people who come here to dig.

Seven women are dead.

All of them drowned. All of them share the same physical description: long dark hair, blue eyes, mid-twenties to mid-thirties. All of them were strangled before they went into the Gulf of Mexico. All of them bear the same fresh tattoo-a sun symbol in black and red ink-over their hearts.

And all of them look exactly like Sloan Merrick.

When a Galveston detective reaches out for help with a case her own department won't touch, Sloan travels to the barrier island that has never recovered from the deadliest natural disaster in American history. The 1900 hurricane killed thousands. Bodies were burned on the beaches. Mass graves were dug and forgotten. The city raised itself seventeen feet and tried to bury the past beneath new streets.

But some things keep washing ashore.

As Sloan investigates, she finds herself surrounded by suspects: a tattoo artist obsessed with the island's dark history, a biker gang mourning one of their own, a diner owner with a type, a cop with a violence problem, a marine biologist who knows too much about tides. And the Chief of Police, whose family has been on the island since before the storm-who insists the drownings are unrelated, who wants Sloan gone, and who speaks about bringing back "the real sun."

The Gulf holds secrets for only so long. Evidence washes up whether anyone wants it to or not. And the closer Sloan gets to the truth, the more she realizes: she's not just investigating these murders.

She's the next offering.

THE GALVESTON DROWNINGS is a haunting, atmospheric thriller about ritual, obsession, and the institutions we trust with our lives-and our deaths.

For readers who couldn't put down: The Drowning Kind by Jennifer McMahon, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny, The Chain by Adrian McKinty