Frozen Cargo for Calcutta
An Ice Trade Mystery

About this book:

Two hundred tons of New England winter sealed in a pine coffin, bound for the furnaces of Calcutta—four thousand leagues of salt water, equatorial heat, and a cargo that refuses to stay frozen. Ship's carpenter Ephraim Croft knows wood, knows the sea, and knows this voyage is madness. But when freshwater weeps from the sealed hold on the very first morning out of Boston, tasting of nothing but cold and a faint, metallic bitter, he realizes the ice isn't the only thing hiding below decks. Something else is breathing in the dark, insulated dark. And it isn't melting.

Captain Vance counts his profit in ounces of meltwater; the second mate counts his secrets in ink-stained fingers; and somewhere in the hold, a stowaway watches the thermometer climb. From the doldrums to the Cape of Good Hope, from a body discovered in the crystal to a cipher that vanishes with the storm, the *Tuscan* becomes a locked-room mystery adrift on the Indian Ocean. The sawdust preserves more than cold—it preserves evidence, motive, and a trail of blood that the heat can't erase.

Rich with the tar, salt, and sweat of the 19th-century ice trade, *Frozen Cargo for Calcutta* delivers a maritime thriller where the ship itself is the suspect. For readers who love C.S. Forester's technical mastery, Anne Perry's period atmosphere, and a puzzle that tightens with every degree the mercury rises. The ice keeps its secrets until the very last unloading—but some truths survive the thaw.