Excerpt from The Marauders by Tom Cooper, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He was still at the kitchen table drinking his beer and browsing through the treasure pictures when his e-mail pinged. He opened up the new message and read it.

TO : LINDQUIST007@gmail.com
FROM: Youredead98989898@gmail.com

WE KNOW WHO U R. WHERE U LIVE. U TRESSPASSING PRIVATE PROPERTY. THIS IS UR ONLY WARNING.

Lindquist's heart kicked and his body went rigid. He sat for some time at the dining room table wondering what to write. Then he typed one-fingered. "WHOSE THIS?" He tapped the delete button several times. Rewrote the original message. Hesitated. Hit send.

He waited, the only sounds the ticking house timbers as they sighed out the heat of the day, the thumping of moths against the windowpane. The faint white hum of the lightbulb filament in the ceiling fixture.

Lindquist's e-mail pinged again.

TO : LINDQUIST007@gmail.com
FROM: Youredead98989898@gmail.com

STAY AWAY FROM THE ISLANDS, FUCKFACE.

WES TRENCH

Midnight. Wes and his father followed the trail from their house toward the harbor. Even from a quarter mile distant, through the palmetto brakes and waist-tall swamp grass, they could hear singing voices carrying through the marsh, the faint quick-tempo strains of zydeco music: the blessing of the shrimping fleet. For the past five years Wes and his father had forgone the ritual, waiting until Father Neely was done blessing the boats until they journeyed to the docks. Wes's father was still angry at God about what happened to his mother. They both were.

One of many things they never spoke about.

It was dark except for the beams of their flashlights skeltering across the ground, the cherry of Wes's father's cigarette. His cotton-white hair, high and tight. Above them a cloud-dimmed quarter moon gleamed through a lacework of live oak branches. They followed a bend in the trail around a stand of sand pine and crossed a rough-board footbridge over a creek. A black snake sidewindered across the water and slipped inklike into the bracken.

Now Wes could hear the grumbling of boat engines, the wheezing stutter of an accordion. The clickety-clack of a washboard, a boat captain shouting orders at his crew. "Don't lay them nets there," said a man with a salt-cured voice. "Starboard, asshole, starboard."

One of Wes's earliest memories was of making this trip through these same woods. On an August night like this, breezeless and heavy with the scent of loam. His father was sprightlier then because this was before his chronic backaches, before the shrimping hauls got smaller and smaller, before all his hair turned white.

Wes's mother held his damp hand in hers as they followed his father in the dark. He could feel the cold metal kiss of her wedding ring.

"How many shrimp you gonna catch, Daddy?" Wes asked.

"Know Mount St. Helens?" his father said.

"Naw, sir."

"Mount Rushmore?"

"Naw, sir."

"You know Miss Hamby, your math teacher with the big ass?"

Wes's mother told him to hush.

He was happier then, Wes's father. Hopeful. They all were.

It was around this time, maybe a year or two later, when Wes came home from school and found a midnight-blue Schwinn waiting for him in the driveway. His father had hauled in a three-ton catch, ridiculously lucky, and bought the bike, new, on a whim.

And later that night while his mother washed the dishes Wes saw his father come up to her from behind and put his hands on her hips. She turned around and they kissed with their eyes closed, something he saw only once or twice before and once or twice after.

Wes didn't know this then, but he knew it now: whoever said that money didn't buy happiness was a damn fool. A damn fool who'd never been poor.

On the other side of the bridge Wes and his father followed the trail up a slippery rise. They stepped over a lichened footlog and saw the harbor lights glimmering through the pines. About thirty or forty people stood on the docks, their silhouettes against the amber lights of the pier. Ship captains and crewmen stood aboard skiffs and oyster luggers, filling bait wells with ice, untangling trawling nets. A few of the boats were already entering the bay, their Christmassy red and green pilot lights glinting on the horizon.

Excerpted from The Marauders by Tom Cooper. Copyright © 2015 by Tom Cooper. Excerpted by permission of Crown. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.