?Call me Ishmael? is the iconic opening line of Herman Melville?s classic American novel, Moby-Dick. Ishmael is a seaman aboard the whaling vessel, Pequod, under the vengeful captain, Ahab. Maniacally seeking retribution from the great white sperm whale called Moby-Dick--the whale responsible for the captain?s missing leg--Ahab leads the crew on a quest to kill the infamous beast.

The Volunteer, a nineteenth-century Yorkshire whaling ship, becomes the stage for a confrontation between brutal harpooner Henry Drax and ex-army surgeon Patrick Sumner, the ship's medic, during a violent, ill-fated voyage to the Arctic.

After a tragic accident maims her laboratory assistant, Dr. Sara Pollard's career as a primate behaviorist lies in ruins. With nothing left to lose, Pollard, descendant of a Nantucket captain whose ship was sunk by a rogue whale, accepts an offer to join anti-whaling activists on a round-the-world racing yacht as the resident scientist. The plan is to sail from Argentina to the stormy Antarctic Sea. There they'll shadow, harass, and expose the Japanese...

"Evangeline Hussey has made a home for herself on Nantucket, though she knows she is still an outsider to the island's small, close-knit community, one that by 1849 has started to feel the decline of a once-thriving whaling industry. Her husband, Hosea, and the life they built together, was once all she needed--but now Hosea is gone, lost at sea. Evangeline is only able to hold on to his inn, and her place on the island, by employing a curious gift...