Camino Ghosts: A Novel

Auteur
John Grisham is the author of fifty consecutive #1 bestsellers, which have been translated into nearly fifty languages. His recent books include Camino Ghosts, The Exchange: After the Firm, and his third Jake Brigance novel, A Time for Mercy, which is being developed by HBO as a limited series.

Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction.

When he's not writing, Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system.

John lives on a farm in central Virginia.

Résumé
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Escape to Camino Island, where bookseller Bruce Cable and novelist Mercer Mann always manage to find trouble in paradise.

Don’t miss John Grisham’s upcoming Framed, his first work of nonfiction since The Innocent Man!

Mercer Mann, a popular writer from Camino Island, is back on the beach, marrying her boyfriend, Thomas, in a seaside ceremony. Bruce Cable, infamous owner of Bay Books, performs the wedding. Afterward, Bruce tells Mercer that he has stumbled upon an incredible story. Mercer desperately needs an idea for her next novel, and Bruce now has one.
 
The true story is about Dark Isle, a sliver of a barrier island not far off the North Florida coast. It was settled by freed slaves three hundred years ago, and their descendants lived there until 1955, when the last one was forced to leave. That last descendant is Lovely Jackson, elderly now, who loves her birthplace and its remarkable history. But now Tidal Breeze, a huge, ruthless corporate developer, wants to build a resort and casino on the island, which Lovely knows, deep down, is rightfully hers.
 
Mercer befriends Lovely, and they plunge into an enormous fight over who owns Dark Isle, taking on Tidal Breeze Corporation, its lawyers, lobbyists, and powerful Florida politicians. But Lovely knows something about the island that could seriously cloud the dollar signs in the developer’s eyes: the island is cursed. It has remained uninhabited for nearly a century for some very real and very troubling reasons. The deep secrets of the past are about to collide with the enormous ambitions of the present, and the fate of Dark Isle—and Camino Island, too—hangs in the balance.
 
Look for all of John Grisham’s rollicking Camino novels:
Camino Island
Camino Winds
Camino Ghosts

Échantillon de lecture
Chapter One

The Passage

None of the fifty or so guests wore shoes. The invitation specifically ruled them out. It was, after all, a beach wedding, and Mercer Mann, the bride, wanted sand between the toes. The suggested attire was beach chic, which may have had one meaning in Palm Beach and another in Malibu, and probably something else in the Hamptons. But on Camino Island it meant anything goes. But no shoes.

The bride herself wore a low-cut white linen gown with an entirely bare back, and since she had been on the island for the past two weeks she was superbly tanned and toned. Stunning. Thomas, her groom, was just as lean and bronzed. He wore a brand-new powder blue seersucker suit, a starched white dress shirt, no tie. And of course no shoes.

Thomas was just happy to be included. He and Mercer had been together for three years, sharing an apartment for the past two, and when Mercer finally got tired of waiting for a proposal she had asked him, three months earlier, “What are you doing on Saturday, June sixth, at seven p.m.?”

“Well, I don’t know. I’ll have to check.”

“Say nothing.”

“What?”

“Say you’re doing nothing.”

“Okay, I’m doing nothing. Why?”

“Because we’re getting married at the beach.”

Since he was not exactly a detail person, he had little input into the planning of the wedding. However, had he been detail-oriented it would not have mattered. Life with Mercer was wonderful in so many ways, not the least of which was the absence of responsibility for making decisions. The pressure was off.

A guitarist strummed love songs as the guests sipped champagne. She was a creative writing student of Mercer’s at Ole Miss and had volunteered for the wedding. A server in a straw hat topped off their glasses. He, too, was studying under Mercer, though she had yet to break the news that his fiction was too weird. If she were a blunt person she would point out that he was likely to earn more money tending bar at small weddings than trying to write novels, but she had yet to gain tenure or the ability to discourage students with little promise.

Mercer taught because she needed a salary. She had published a collection of short stories and two novels. She was searching for a third. Her last one, Tessa, had been a bestseller, and its success had prompted Viking Press to give her a two-book contract. Her editor at Viking was still waiting for the next story idea. So was Mercer. She had some money in the bank but not enough to retire, not enough to buy the freedom to write full-time with no worries.

A few of her guests had that freedom. Myra and Leigh, the grandes dames of the island’s literary mafia, had been together for decades and were living off royalties. Back in their glory days they had cranked out a hundred steamy romance novels under a dozen pseudonyms. Bob Cobb was an ex-felon who’d served time in a federal pen for bank fraud. He wrote hard-boiled crime stories, with a penchant for prison violence. When drinking, which was practically all the time, he claimed he had not pursued honest labor in twenty years. He was a writer! Perhaps the wealthiest of the group was Amy Slater, a young mother of three who’d hit pay dirt with a vampire series.

Amy and her husband, Dan, had taken a chunk of their money and built a splendid house on the beach, about half a mile from Mercer’s cottage. When they heard about the wedding, they insisted on hosting it along with the reception.

Like every bride, Mercer envisioned a lovely walk down the aisle with her father. He, though, got cut from the ceremony, as did the aisle. Mr. Mann was a complicated soul who had never spent time with his wife or daughters. When he complained that the wedding might conflict with his busy schedule, Mercer said never mind. They would have more fun without him.

Her sister, Connie, was there and could always be counted on for family drama. Her two rotten teenage girls were already sitting in the back row and staring at their phones. Her husband was gulping champagne. On the more pleasant side, her literary agent, Etta Shuttleworth, was there with her husband, as was her Viking editor, who no doubt wanted to grab a moment and inquire about the next novel, now a year overdue. Mercer was determined not to talk business. It was her wedding, and if the editor got the least bit pushy then Etta was expected to step in. Three sorority sisters from Sewanee were there, two with husbands. The third was fresh off an acrimonious divorce that Mercer had heard far too much about. All three had the hots for Thomas, and Mercer was keeping an eye on them. The fact that he was five years younger than his bride made him even sexier. Two colleagues from the Ole Miss faculty had survived the final cut of the invitation list and were spending a week on the island. Mercer got on with them well enough, but was cautious. She had invited them only to be polite. She was on her third campus in the past six years and had learned a lot abo…