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A psychological thriller of razor-sharp intensity: mysterious, erotic, and deeply readable.
Robert Stone’s remarkable new novel is a psychological thriller of razor-sharp intensity: mysterious, erotic, and deeply readable. Michael Ahearn, a professor at a rural college, sheds his comfortable assumptions when he becomes obsessed with a new faculty member from the Caribbean, Lara Purcell. An expert in Third World politics, Lara is seductive, dangerous — and in thrall, she claims, to a voodoo spirit who has taken possession of her soul. Impassioned and determined, Michael pursues Lara to her native island of St. Trinity, heedless of the political upheaval there. Together they desperately attempt to reclaim all that Lara has lost. Yet island intrigue ensnares them. Lara sacrifices herself to ritual and superstition. Michael is caught unawares in a high-stakes smuggling scheme. In his feverish state of mind, the world becomes an ever-shifting phantasmagoria. He is, himself, possessed. In Bay of Souls, readers will recognize the trademarks of Stone’s greatest fiction: the American embroiled in Third World corruption, the diplomats and covert operatives, the idealists and opportunists. Yet here the author’s sights are set inward, to a place where politics is superfluous, experience unreliable. Never before has Stone probed so powerfully the psychological depths of one man’s mind. What he finds there defies expectations.
If you liked Bay of Souls, try these:
by Sean Rowe
Published 2006
'Sean Rowe's Fever is as fresh and blistering and relentless a thriller as any tropical noir I've read. Rowe knows this territory well--especially the creatures that slither about it when the sun goes down. Jump on board, hang on tight.'
by Liz Jensen
Published 2006
The story of a family falling apart, told in the vivid voices of its comatose son and Dr. Dannachet as he is drawn into the family's circle. Full of astonishing twists and turns, this is a masterful tale of the secrets the human mind can hide.