Fevre Dream

Abner Marsh runs a riverboat business that is barely afloat. When a rich aristocrat offers him a partnership, Marsh smells a rat, and the moment he sits across from Joshua York, with that unnervingly pale face and cold, hard eyes, he knows for certain. York is untroubled that the brutal winter of 1857 has left Marsh with a single seaworthy vessel out of a worn-out fleet, and he has no concern for how many years it will take to recoup his money. He has private reasons for wanting to travel the great Mississippi, and he makes clear they are none of Marsh's business, whatever strange, unpredictable or willful choices he makes along the way.

Marsh had planned to refuse. The deal was too thick with secrets, and secrets on the river usually meant trouble. Yet the prospect of gold and a fine new steamboat, plus York's hypnotic stare, wore down his objections. It is only on the maiden run of his new sidewheeler, the Fevre Dream, that Marsh discovers he has signed on to something darker than he imagined, and possibly nobler too, something tied to the most impossible dream of all.

The novel follows a vampire pursuing a way to bring his kind and humanity together, alongside a talkative riverman who dreams of living forever. Along the way it draws on the legends of the steamboat age and the ancient, enormous river that carried them. Written by George R. R. Martin, better known for the A Song of Ice and Fire series, it is a standalone work for adult readers.