Ten miles off the New England coast, the Isles of Shoals have fascinated historians and geologists for hundreds of years. Surrounded by treacherous underwater ledges and unpredictable currents, the grouping of nine tiny islands is rich in folklore and mythology. But the Shoals also hold a deadly secret. Something has come to roost there, a force neither living nor dead, a power without conscience or remorse. And now, three hundred years after its first awakening, as a line of lethal tropical storms marches steadily up the eastern seaboard, it is about to rise again. Feeding on weakness and desperation, and fueled by the fury of the natural elements, its power can already be felt on the mainland, as it begins to draw a handful of unwilling, unknowing victims to the Shoals, searching for the perfect human host.... Doyle Walker, an architect from Iowa who has never even seen the ocean before; Lea Stoddard, a lifelong resident of the seacoast, whose secret emptiness may provide the mysterious force with the strength it needs to reach the mainland; Maxwell Cavanaugh, a rich and powerful stock broker, who believes no one is beyond his reach; and Moses Thayer, the former lighthouse keeper of the Isles of Shoals, whose past has made him all too familiar with the terror they are all about to face. All of them feel the call of the unnatural phenomena that has reawakened on the Shoals, and each of them has become entangled in a tightening web of human deceit and supernatural tragedy spanning back to the earliest days of the islands themselves....