The Night That Finds Us All

Jacobs (A Lush and Seething Hell) sends Florida ship captain Samantha Vineyard into peril in this nerve-rattling maritime horror novel. Too broke to fix her boat, Sam accepts a gig as an engineer on the Blackwatch, a supposedly haunted ship set to sail from Puget Sound to the Panama Canal and then across the Atlantic. She has a complicated history with Loick Archambault, the estranged friend who offers her the job, and the ship’s captain, Hank Huntington, and is familiar with most of the crew except for the first mate, a woman called Seabees, and three wealthy wannabe sailors all named Steve, who’ve paid Hank for the learning experience. During the journey, Sam finds a decrepit journal from the sailboat’s first voyage that details the captain’s increasingly erratic behavior and fascination with a mysterious ritual. After Sam begins to hear voices, one of the Steves disappears in San Diego, and a crewman falls from a mast in Panama City, where Sam meets a witch who warns her about disasters to come. Jacobs walks a fine line between foreshadowing and telegraphing, but manages to conceal enough surprises to make even seasoned horror fans jump. This delivers the goods. Agent: Stacia Decker, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. (Oct.)