The Salvage

In Salam’s chilling latest (after Hazardous Spirits), a Scottish marine archaeologist fears she’s encountered a ghost while exploring a Victorian shipwreck off the coast of a remote island. Marta Khoury, riddled with grief and guilt after the drowning death of her illicit lover, Lewis, travels from Edinburgh to the island of Cairnroch in December 1962. The Purdie family has hired her to search the underwater wreckage of the HMS Deliverance, their ancestor’s ship, recently discovered in the Arctic Ocean and dragged back to a port on the island. During her first dive, she sees a skulking figure inside the Deliverance and fears it’s Lewis, who also hailed from Cairnroch. Terrified, she resolves to leave the island as soon as possible. Back on land, the heirlooms she recovered from the wreck inexplicably disappear, and the Purdie lighthouse burns down. As Marta hunts for the stolen artifacts, she’s viewed derisively as an outsider and even banished from a shelter during a nuclear bomb scare. Meanwhile, a deep snow settles over the island, isolating it from the mainland. Salam sustains a sense of dread and keeps readers guessing as to whether Marta is truly haunted by a ghost or simply overcome by very real human threats. Fans of neo-gothic fiction ought to check this out. Agent: Catherine Drayton, InkWell Management. (Oct.)