Medusa (Archivos NUMA 8)

April 20, 2009
In the prologue to the winning eighth Kurt Austin adventure from bestseller Cussler and Shamus-winner Kemprecos (after The Navigator
), 18-year-old Caleb Nye, a farm boy on his first sea voyage in 1848, finds himself a modern-day Jonah after being swallowed by a whale and then cut from the stomach, alive but forever changed. In the present, a Russian captain sees his Typhoon-class submarine sold to an unknown buyer, and in China, Dr. Song Lee, who's been banished to the countryside, gets orders to return to Beijing to fight a deadly SARS epidemic. Meanwhile, off Bermuda, Kurt Austin and the stalwart crew of the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) lower a bathysphere to the ocean depths, where something big snaps the cables connecting the vessel to the mother ship. Soon enough, the disparate plot lines converge in an action-packed tale that snags readers and drags them racing through heavy seas and high drama. 600,000 first printing.