For most of his life, Former U.S. Justice Department operative Cotton Malone believed his father, Navy Captain Forrest Malone, died in a 1971 accident aboard the submarine USS Blazek. The government maintains the sub was lost in the mid-Atlantic, but Malone discovers it was actually near Antarctica on a secret mission.

After Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was released in the spring 2009, a barrage of Jane Austen novels infused with supernatural creatures has followed. Ben H. Winters joined the bandwagon in July of 2009 with his version of an Austen classic, entitled Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.