In 1846, a US whaling vessel is struck by a mysterious and deadly tropical illness. In desperation, the captain shores his ship on a hostile island - where, miraculously, his crew are saved by a cure administered by the natives.

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.
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Kurt Austin must stop a deadly virus from decimating the world in the latest NUMA Files novel. Research using a newly discovered jellyfish shows promising results, but before the tests even start, scientists studying these Blue Medusas start dying. As the pandemic threatens to spread through China, the NUMA team realizes that a Chinese triad is behind the outbreak. Now in their eighth adventure, Austin and partner Zavala are becoming almost as entertaining as Dirk Pitt and his gang. Some clunky dialogue and an ending right out of a Scooby Doo cartoon hurt a bit, but Cussler fans will stick around for the action. --Jeff Ayers

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