Athema — D.A. Dalessandro

There is a horror as old as the sea. For centuries, it has stalked unsuspecting sailors and is literally the stuff of legends. Lethal and relentless, it moves by night and strikes without warning. In the year 1856, it has come to the isolated island of Nantucket to feed. Screenwriter D.A. Dalessandro ("Snakes On A Plane") channels Bram Stoker and Jules Verne in his meticulously researched twist on the Gothic horror novel. When Harvard medical student Balthazar Andrews arrives to examine a body found drained of blood, he is drawn into an adventure that shatters his understanding of science and the natural world. Luckily, he acquires a stalwart ally-eighteen-year-old Prudence Mott, a feisty Quaker with a devotion to the works of Edgar Allan Poe. As bodies pile up, Balthazar and Prudence gather an eccentric naturalist, a crusty soldier of fortune and a Samoan whale hunter in a desperate quest to destroy the creature they call "Anathema."