Sailing Thrillers

USA Today best-selling and award-winning author Barbara Freethy writes wonderfully entertaining contemporary novels. Summer Secrets is the compelling story of three sisters and the burden of the terrible secret they share.

Crispin is a mosaicist, a layer of bright tiles. Still grieving for the family he lost to the plaque, he lives only for his arcane craft. But an imperial summons from Valerius the Trakesian to Sarantium, the most magnificent place in the world, is difficult to resist. In a world half-wild and tangled with magic, a journey to Sarantium means a walk into destiny. Bearing with him a deadly secret and a Queen's seductive promise, guarded only by his own wits and a talisman from an alchemist's treasury, Crispin sets out for the fabled city. Along the way he will encounter a great beast.

When she wangles the job of skippering a Viking longship for a film, Cass Lynch thinks her big break has finally arrived - even though it means returning home to the Shetland Islands, which she ran away from as a teenager. Then the 'accidents' begin - and when a dead woman turns up on the boat's deck, Cass realises that she, her family and her past are under suspicion from the disturbingly shrewd Detective Inspector Macrae.

Finn is retired after a 20-odd-year career with an unnamed government agency, but he still handles a contract job for them once in a while. The series begins in Puerto Rico with Assassins and Liars, when Finn meets Mary.

When a visiting yachting couple go missing from the Shetland oil capital of Brae, sailing skipper Cass Lynch overcomes her mistrust of the land world to ask for help from her old adversary DI Gavin Macrae. He discovers a link to international art theft and warns Cass to steer clear - but when one of her sailing pupils goes missing, she goes alone to discover the secrets of the Neolithic tomb known locally as a ‘trowie mound’.... Ghosts, folklore and a nail-biting finale at the local show come together to make an atmospheric, fast-moving thriller.

When an English tycoon dies mysteriously, he leaves a note naming six people who might have wanted him dead. Daisy Kean and PI Harry Montana team up to take the suspects - and also six red herrings - on a Mediterranean cruise, culminating at his beautiful villa on Capri, where his will is to be read and the killer unmasked. With the beautiful seaside settings plus the beginnings of a romance between loner Montana and wary Daisy, passions flare and the mystery deepens.

Years ago, Beth Lathrop and her sister Kate suffered what they thought would be the worst tragedy of their lives the night both the famous painting Moonlight and their mother were taken. The detective assigned to the case, Conor Reid, swore to protect the sisters from then on. Beth moved on, throwing herself fully into the art world, running the family gallery, and raising a beautiful daughter with her husband Pete. Kate, instead, retreated into herself and took to the skies as a pilot, always on the run.

They're out there, under the salt - the bodies of German seamen who used to lie in wait at the mouth of the Mississippi for unescorted American tankers sailing from the oil refineries of Baton Rouge out into the Gulf of Mexico. As a child, Dave Robicheaux had been haunted by the sailors' images. Years later, Robicheaux, a detective with the New Iberia sheriff's office, finds himself and his family at serious risk, stalked for his knowledge of a watery burial ground by a mysterious man named Will Buchalter - a man who believes that the Holocaust was one big hoax.

It was a family escape from the high-stress world of high-tech. A family - a mother, a father, and a son - sailing across the Meditteranean, stopping in a small port city on the island of Malta. After a night of drinking, something joins them on board. The father wakes with a hangover so powerful it seems supernatural. The family sets sail for Venice. Their small boat bobs in the sea. They are not alone. As they traverse the wine-dark sea, their trouble grows and madness engulfs the little yacht. Rage, history, and fear combine to create a horror thriller in the tradition of The Ruins and ...

With the summer season on Sandhamn comes an unsettling mystery for Detective Inspector Thomas Andreasson. A bullied young boy has vanished from a sailing camp on neighboring Lökholmen Island. Has the terrorized eleven-year-old run away? Or, in this isolated vacation spot where strangers lurk, is it something more ominous?

They're out there, under the salt: the bodies of German seamen who used to lie in wait at the mouth of the Mississippi for unescorted American tankers sailing from the oil refineries of Baton Rouge out into the Gulf of Mexico. As a child, Dave Robicheaux had been haunted by the sailors' images. Years later, Robicheaux, a detective with the New Iberia sheriff's office, finds himself and his family at serious risk, stalked for his knowledge of a watery burial ground by a mysterious man.

After a whirlwind romance, a young woman returns to the opulent, secluded Long Island mansion of her new fiancé, Max Winter - a wealthy politician and recent widower - and a life of luxury she’s never known. But all is not as it appears at the Asherley estate. The house is steeped in the memory of Max’s beautiful first wife, Rebekah, who haunts the young woman’s imagination and feeds her uncertainties, while his very alive teenage daughter, Dani, makes her life a living hell.

Trapped on a storm-damaged yacht, a grieving woman must conquer her worst fears and fight for her life, in a story described as The Shining on a yacht. Dr. Dagny Steele is on the verge of fulfilling her lifelong calling to become a pediatric surgeon, when the sudden death of her daughter sends her into a crushing depression.

Alexandria's father walked out of her and her mother's lives five years ago. Now Alexandria has been murdered. Her killer is dead; case closed. Does her father deserve to be told of his daughter's death even though he abandoned his family? According to Alexandria's aunt, yes. First, he must be found, and who better to find him than Private Investigator CJ Washburn? After all, wasn't it because of CJ that she wound up dead in the first place, targeted by a deranged killer?

Sailing the Caribbean is every yacht owner's dream. Azure waters, golden sunshine, and warm winds greet sailors in every port. But that dream is shattered when one boat returns from a race without its captain. The story is that the skipper fell overboard, but the clues point to something much more sinister, and one of the crew is arrested. And that crew member happens to be a friend of Miami Jones.

War has broken out on the Mainland. The North and South are fighting. How does this impact the Americans living in the Pacific Islands of Hawaii? William Goode's son is missing after joining the Northern Army. William has rushed to the mainland to find his son. He enlists as a medical officer to gain access the battleground front and is captured. William's wife, Kelea, and the rest of the ohana travel across a war torn continent to help them. Meanwhile the Confederate Navel vessel, a steam auxiliary clipper ship is prowling the Pacific intent on sinking Yankee whalers to stop the flow of ...

While onboard her last chartered sailing trip of the season, Cass Lynch is awoken in the middle of the night by a Mayday call to the Shetland coastguard. A fishing vessel has become trapped on the rocks off the coast of one of the islands. In the days that follow, there's both a shocking murder and a baffling death. On the surface, there's no link, but when Cass becomes involved, it is soon clear that her life is also in danger. Convinced that someone sinister is at work in these Shetland waters, Cass is determined to find and stop them.

A Serial Killer, Sex Traffickers, and Mercenaries in the Caribbean A serial killer is roaming from Florida to the Eastern Caribbean. His victims are women who hitchhike on his sailing yacht. Picking up Dani Berger was his first mistake. After he leaves her for dead, Dani is found by human traffickers, who have their own plans for her. Hitchhiking on sailing yachts in the islands is dangerous, but not as dangerous as the people sent to rescue Dani. J.-P. Berger, her father, is a French arms dealer from Martinique. Two of his friends leave a trail of mayhem in their wake as they track down ...

“Daddy, why isn’t that man swimming?” Stand-Alone story of a wealthy private equity investor and a greedy CEO's quest to maximize profit at any cost. The body floating near the family’s sailboat triggers a request for Steve Wilson to complete the dead man's due diligence assignment. Join Steve as he navigates a path between power-driven executives to uncover the truth about the accountant's body in Boothbay Harbor. Why are Steve’s requests for financial data stonewalled at every turn? Is it just arrogance and greed, or an attempt to hide something deeper? Can he trust the woman ...

It's the dark nights in the run up to Christmas, and sailing sleuth Cass Lynch's first night on dry land is disturbed by strange noises outside her isolated cottage. Tiny footprints in the moonlit snow trail from her front door before mysteriously disappearing. Soon Cass learns others were visited by the same tiny feet in the night. It looks like ingenious local teenagers playing tricks - but what happens when festive games turn deadly?