Set on a fictional and very, very remote island at the bottom of the world, Charlotte McConaghy’s third novel brings new meaning to Southern gothic: There are dark and stormy nights, melodrama, and a ruddy lighthouse keeper, but whales and penguins, too. Action commences when a shipwreck victim washes up in a tangle of kelp; she carries secrets and an air of mystery, but so do the widower and his three children tending the island, its abandoned research station, and its seedbank. Racing to save humanity’s foodstock—the seeds—from rising seas and flooding, patriarch Dominic and castaway Rowan circle each other warily, probing for answers while the reader wonders who, if anyone, will get off the island alive.
Wild Dark Shore