250 pp. A jacket tear-fold muss at the top of the spine, an otherwise very good jacket. 'The Traveller's Tree is a spellbinding and most unusual tale of desperation and suspense, which takes place in the eighteenth-century maritime setting Patrick O'Brian has lately made so familiar to American readers. A modern fable reminiscent of Camus's classic, The Plague, The Traveller's Tree is at its core an exploration of man's nature. Somewhere in the Caribbean Sea the French ship Entremetteuse lies stranded without a breeze, its crew racked by starvation and disease, its wood rotting, and its masts limp. An island and the dim outline of the fabled traveller's tree appear on the horizon. Although only a gunshot away, the island's sheer cliffs and coral reefs make it cruelly unreachable. The heat grows unbearable, the ship's stores are nearly depleted, and the rats eagerly await the remains. . .'--Jacket copy. 'Toward half past six o'clock the men's hopes were revived. The sun had sunk behind the bluffs, darkening the island. Pale scraps of mist slipped down from the foliage to obscure the shore, leaving only flat washes of indigo wreathed in swirls of gray. Suddenly, a sailor called loudly for the officer of the watch, urging him to turn his spyglass on a hill where the man claimed to have seen a moving white form. Taking up his glass, Colinet searched among the bushes and low palm trees.' Other New Press Titles: Marguerite Duras-The North China Lover; Tibor Fischer-Under the Frog; Romesh Gunesekera-Monkfish Moon; Abdulrazak Gurnah-Paradise; Jaan Kross-Professor Marten's Departure; Jaan Kross-The Czar's Madman.