Bay of Souls

From a National Book Award–winning author: An obsessive love leads a man into a spiral of corruption and crime in a novel “as frightening as it is hypnotic” (Booklist).

Michael Ahearn, a professor at a rural Midwestern college, has a wife and son and a good life that doesn’t quite satisfy him. Then he becomes obsessed with a new faculty member at his school: Lara Purcell. An expert in Third World politics, Lara is seductive, dangerous—and in thrall, she claims, to a voodoo spirit who’s 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 she’s lost. But as Lara sacrifices herself to ritual and superstition, Michael’s caught up in a high-stakes smuggling scheme—and in his feverish mental state, the world becomes an ever-shifting phantasmagoria. He is, himself, possessed.

 

From the New York Times–bestselling author of Dog Soldiers and Damascus Gate, Bay of Souls is a twisting psychological thriller about diplomats and covert operatives, idealists and opportunists, a story of an American embroiled in foreign corruption—and the labyrinthine depths of his own mind.

 

“Stone depicts the internal savaging of his hero’s mind with chilling precision, and his evocation of Central America in turmoil deserves comparison with Graham Greene.” —Booklist

 

“A stunning work, a profound and profoundly moving meditation tethered to a runaway train . . . Bay of Souls is a triumph.” —The San Diego Union-Tribune