Galleon

When the space liner Solar Princess tears itself apart, retired shipwright Gus Cartwright escapes in a lifeboat—alone, without a working beacon, and hurtling toward an uncharted ocean world. His only link to his wife Carol is a one-way video channel that posts directly to YouTube. His only ally on the ground is Alyssa, an alien AI embedded in the most extraordinary ship he’s ever seen: a full-rigged galleon that is also, impossibly, a starship. But Alyssa refuses to fly. First, they must finish a yacht race that began twenty-eight thousand years ago—by sailing two thousand miles across an alien sea.

Then a second lifeboat crashes, carrying Hannah, the German Chancellor’s headstrong granddaughter, and Kyoko, a Japanese actress who can wield a katana as well as a kitchen knife. Suddenly billions are watching. Gus’s daily love letters to Carol become the most-followed broadcast on Earth, and three strangers must become a family to survive volcanic eruptions, shark-infested waters, starvation, and pirates who will kill to seize Alyssa’s secrets.

Part castaway epic, part age-of-sail adventure, part interstellar voyage home, Galleon is a story about stubbornness, ingenuity, and the people worth crossing a galaxy to return to.

For fans of Andy Weir’s The Martian and Patrick O’Brian’s seafaring classics—set among the stars.