The Book of Speculation

Simon Watson, a young librarian on the verge of losing his job, lives alone on the Long Island Sound in his family's home, a house slowly crumbling toward the sea. His parents are long dead; his mother, once a circus mermaid who made her living holding her breath, drowned in the water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, works for a traveling carnival reading tarot cards and rarely calls.

In late June, Simon receives a mysterious package: an old, water-damaged log book from a traveling circus more than two hundred years ago, sent by an antiquarian bookseller who bought it on speculation.

As Simon pores over its pages of notes, sketches, and strange flourishes, he finds his grandmother's name inside, and begins to suspect a pattern: the women in his family have a habit of drowning on July 24.

When Enola turns up at home for the first time in six years, Simon has only weeks to decode his family's history and break the pattern before it claims her too.

A debut novel about the power of books, family, and inherited curses, illustrated throughout with the author's own two-color drawings.