Randall Peffer – författare

In the tradition of Shadow Divers, this is the gripping true account of the search for German U-boat U-550, the last unfound, diveable wreck of a U-boat off the United States coast, and the battle in which it was sunk.   On April 16, 1944, the SS Pan Pennsylvania was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-550 off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts. In return the sub was driven to the surface with depth charges, and then sent to the bottom of the ocean by three destroyer escorts that were guarding the naval convoy. For more than sixty years the location of the U-boat’s wreck eluded divers.   In 2012, a team found it—the last undiscovered U-boat in dive-able waters off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, more than three hundred feet below the surface.   This is the story of their twenty-year quest to find this "Holy Grail" of deep-sea diving and their tenacious efforts to dive on this treacherous wreck—and of the stunning clash at sea that sealed its doom and brought the Battle of the Atlantic to America’s doorstep.

In the tradition of Shadow Divers, this is the gripping true account of the search for German U-boat U-550, the last unfound, diveable wreck of a U-boat off the United States coast, and the battle in which it was sunk.   On April 16, 1944, the SS Pan Pennsylvania was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-550 off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts. In return the sub was driven to the surface with depth charges, and then sent to the bottom of the ocean by three destroyer escorts that were guarding the naval convoy. For more than sixty years the location of the U-boat’s wreck eluded divers.   In 2012, a team found it—the last undiscovered U-boat in dive-able waters off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, more than three hundred feet below the surface.   This is the story of their twenty-year quest to find this "Holy Grail" of deep-sea diving and their tenacious efforts to dive on this treacherous wreck—and of the stunning clash at sea that sealed its doom and brought the Battle of the Atlantic to America’s doorstep.From the Hardcover edition.

The total loss of SS Yarmouth Castle in 1965 is the deadliest passenger ship disaster off the American coast since the burning of SS Morro Castle in 1934. Eighty-four passengers and two crew died in the early-morning hours of November 13, 1965, when the cruise liner SS Yarmouth Castle caught fire and sank near Great Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas. Four others would die later from their injuries. The ship had 552 people aboard on her weekend round trip between Miami and Nassau. Her total loss marks the deadliest passenger ship disaster off the coast of the United States since the burning of the liner SS Morro Castle off New Jersey in 1934. The survival of over 450 people from the inferno was nothing short of a miracle. The subsequent accident investigation and voluminous press coverage exposed the cavalier operational practices of cruise lines at the time and eventually changed US and international standards for the construction and operations of passenger ships. One of the great ironies of the disaster is that the COO of the Yarmouth Steamship Company avoided any significant monetary and legal repercussions from the disaster and went on to start the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines juggernaut. Based on the authors’ collection of firsthand narratives from survivors and their families, thousands of pages of testimony from the United States Coast Guard accident investigation, and contemporaneous press coverage, the book is primarily the story of the night the Castle burned and, secondarily, the legal and regulatory aftermath of the disaster.

Inspired by one of the largest unsolved cases of serial killings in the United States, the New Bedford Serial Killings of 1988.Harbormaster Corby Church finds the bones of a human body on Bird Island off Cape Cod. As brassy, young police detective Yemanja Colon struggles with the case, she realizes that Church may know more than he’s letting on, and a trip he took to the Bahamas in the ’80s may prove the key.

Young Cape Cod public defender and commercial fisherman Michael Decastro ventures to Saigon with his father, a Vietnam War vet, to come to the aid of his long-lost client and love-interest Tuki Aparecio.The half-Vietnamese, half-African American diva is in a fight of her life with a mysterious dragon lady from Indochina''s underworld. At stake is an antique ruby in Tuki''s possession...and the mortal souls of everyone Decastro loves.Ghosts that the Decastros and Tuki carry with them from Cape Cod and Southeast Asia will have their day.

A Novel of the Civil War at SeaThis final volume in the Raphael Semmes trilogy of Civil War naval thrillers, Seahawk Burning, follows the real-life adventures of Confederate Captain Raphael Semmes and his ship, the C.S.S. Alabama, on the final legs of their reign of terror on the high seas. The novel chronicles Semmes''s rise to mythic stature as he becomes Lincoln''s public enemy number one, seizing and burning scores of Yankee ships in the Caribbean Sea, the south Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and the South China Sea before heading to France for sanctuary...all the while dodging scores of federal Navy ships pursuing him.Enemy vessels, spy games, mutinies, storms, and loneliness stock Semmes''s cruise during 1863-64. Meanwhile, back in the Lincoln White House, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles tries to marshal his warships to catch Semmes and simultaneously protect his president from spies and assassins, one of whom is Semmes''s mistress.In addition to the main characters, the cast of Seahawk Burning includes historical figures from the governments and navies of the North and South as well as the Black Moses Harriet Tubman, John Wilkes Booth, and his fellow conspirators.All of the threads in this saga come together in a final showdown off Cherbourg, France, when Semmes decides to take the Alabama into battle against the U.S.S. Kearsarge, captained by his old friend John A. Winslow. It is one of the greatest naval battles in history.

Winter in a New England prep school brings term papers, wet snow, and the suicide of a young black student. Except Liberty Baker''s friends are convinced she couldn''t have taken her own life, and Liberty''s faculty advisor, Awasha Patterson, believes them. She is desperate to believe any theory that Liberty''s death was suspicious--Awasha turned the girl away the night of her death. If Liberty had been suicidal, Awasha had missed the signs.But how to prove it? No one in the school wants to think that it could have been a racially-motivated crime; vague whispers of school-sanctioned secret societies are quickly stopped by the headmaster. Awasha can''t let it rest, her guilt is consuming. So she seeks out help from a man she knows understands guilt--a man so sensitive, so compassionate to others, that it ruined his career as a defense attorney with one fateful case. Awasha finds Michael DeCastro on his father''s fishing boat, and Michael knows from the moment he sees her that he''s about to be haunted by another injustice. And he knows he''ll give everything of himself until the spirits of the dead lie in peace.

Luang kho ngu hao. Now I put my hand in the cobra''s throat.Tuki Aparecio did not kill her lover. She did not burn down the Painted Lady--at least, not with fire. Tuki lit up the stage nightly, with her hair in braids and her glorious costumes; glittering, smoldering, singing her heart out for an audience who loved her. She brought the house down with her performances. But she''s innocent of murder, innocent of arson.How can Michael DeCastro possibly hope to defend this beautiful drag queen, who brings with her a whole pack of nasty little secrets, straight from Bangkok''s notorious tenderloin district? She speaks in aphorisms, the wisdom of the Buddha combined with the lyrics of Whitney Houston. She is fascinating. And Michael can''t let her go to jail.

A Novel of the Civil War at SeaThis final volume in the Raphael Semmes trilogy of Civil War naval thrillers, Seahawk Burning, follows the real-life adventures of Confederate Captain Raphael Semmes and his ship, the C.S.S. Alabama, on the final legs of their reign of terror on the high seas. The novel chronicles Semmes's rise to mythic stature as he becomes Lincoln's public enemy number one, seizing and burning scores of Yankee ships in the Caribbean Sea, the south Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and the South China Sea before heading to France for sanctuary...all the while dodging scores of federal Navy ships pursuing him.Enemy vessels, spy games, mutinies, storms, and loneliness stock Semmes's cruise during 1863-64. Meanwhile, back in the Lincoln White House, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles tries to marshal his warships to catch Semmes and simultaneously protect his president from spies and assassins, one of whom is Semmes's mistress.In addition to the main characters, the cast of Seahawk Burning includes historical figures from the governments and navies of the North and South as well as the Black Moses Harriet Tubman, John Wilkes Booth, and his fellow conspirators.All of the threads in this saga come together in a final showdown off Cherbourg, France, when Semmes decides to take the Alabama into battle against the U.S.S. Kearsarge, captained by his old friend John A. Winslow. It is one of the greatest naval battles in history.

In Seahawk Hunting Rafael Semmes abandons his broken raider, the Sumter, which is penned in by the Federals near Gibraltar. In the meantime, he has the Brits build him a new ship in Liverpool. Called the 290, it is the fastest commercial raider designed for its time, and it is waiting for Semmes in the Azores.After taking command of the ship he sets out seizing and burning whalers at the rate of one a day, sails back across the North Atlantic against the gulf stream where he picks off another dozen merchant ships headed to Europe.Then, after a thwarted attempt to sneak attack New York City, Semmes makes a beeline for Martinique in the Caribbean during the course of which he has to put down a mutiny on board and evade the USS San Jacinto which has come to destroy him. Finally, Semmes makes it to Galveston where he has an epic gun battle with the USS Hatteras.

Southern Seahawk, the first novel in the Seahawk Trilogy, grows from the true story of Commander Raphael Semmes’ rise to infamy, becoming the Union’s “Public Enemy Number One.”In June, 1861, Semmes’ Confederate cruiser Sumter makes a daring escape through the Federal Blockade of the Mississippi. So begins the commander’s career as the Southern Seahawk. With a hand-picked crew of Southern officers and mercenary seamen, Semmes seizes eight enemy ships in four days, a record never surpassed by any other captain of a warship. By the time the cruises of the Sumter and her successor Alabama end, Semmes will have taken and burned more than eighty prizes, making him the most successful maritime predator in history.For two and a half years Semmes eludes a pack of pursuers and almost single-handedly drives marine insurance rates so high in the North, that many Yankee ships refuse to sail until he is caught Back in Washington, Semmes’ predations fuel feuds within the Lincoln cabinet and incite the spy games of historical figures like courtesans Rose Greenhow, Betty Duval, detective Allan Pinkerton and the commander’s mistress.

An “offbeat legal procedural/whodunit” in the Cape Island mystery series set in Provincetown that “fans of Jonathan Ames’s The Extra Man and other gending-bending fiction” (Publishers Weekly) will find intriguing.Luang kho ngu hao. Now I put my hand in the cobra’s throat. Tuki Aparecio did not kill her lover. She did not burn down the Painted Lady—at least, not with fire. Tuki lit up the stage nightly, with her hair in braids and her glorious costumes; glittering, smoldering, singing her heart out for an audience who loved her. She brought the house down with her performances. But she’s innocent of murder, innocent of arson. How can Michael DeCastro possibly hope to defend this beautiful drag queen, who brings with her a whole pack of nasty little secrets, straight from Bangkok’s notorious tenderloin district? She speaks in aphorisms, the wisdom of the Buddha combined with the lyrics of Whitney Houston. She is fascinating. And Michael can’t let her go to jail.

Selected for the USCG Commandant's 2018 Reading ListNever to Return is the harrowing tale of the torpedoing and sinking of a Coast Guard ship and the loss of 171 Coast Guardsmen off the coast of Iceland during WWII.The USS Leopold was a U.S. Coast Guard destroyer escort in a convoy of merchant ships carrying war materiel to England, on the lookout for the deadly U-boat wolf packs lurking in the North Atlantic. The Leopold was largely unarmored, lightly armed, and no match for the U-255’s torpedoes. Never to Return is the story of gunner Sparky Nersasian and his shipmates’ struggles to survive the Leopold’s sinking.

Never to Return is the harrowing tale of the torpedoing and sinking of a Coast Guard ship and the loss of 171 Coast Guardsmen off the coast of Iceland during WWII.TheUSS Leopold was a U.S. Coast Guard destroyer escort in a convoy of merchant ships carrying war materiel to England, on the lookout for the deadly U-boat wolf packs lurking in the North Atlantic. The Leopold was largely unarmored, lightly armed, and no match for the U-255’s torpedoes. Never to Return is the story of gunner Sparky Nersasian and his shipmates’ struggles to survive the Leopold’s sinking.

Dangerous Shallows tells the story of a quest to solve maritime cold-cases. The odyssey takes the reader along for a moment-by-moment look at the events surrounding the loss of more than twenty different ships, and includes the stories of discovering their wrecks and learning about the final hours of each of these ships.

This tale of exploration and adventure is a warm account of the people and places around the waters of Southern Massachusetts.