Matthew Pearl

On December 10, 1887, a shark fishing boat disappeared. On board the doomed vessel were the Walkers—the ship’s captain Frederick, his wife Elizabeth, their three teenage sons, and their dog—along with the ship’s crew. The family had spotted a promising fishing location when a terrible storm arose, splitting their vessel in two and leaving those onboard adrift on the perilous sea. When the castaways awoke the next morning, they discovered they had been washed ashore—on an island inhabited by a large but ragged and emaciated man who introduced himself as Hans. Hans appeared to have been there for a while and could quickly educate the Walkers and their crew on the island’s resources. But Hans had a secret . . . and as the Walker family gradually came to learn more, what seemed like a stroke of luck to have the mysterious man’s assistance became something ominous, something darker. Like David Grann and Stacy Schiff, Matthew Pearl unveils one of the most incredible yet little-known historical true stories, and the only known instance in history of an actual family of castaways. Save Our Souls asks us to consider who we might become if we found ourselves trapped on a deserted island.

An edge-of-the-seat work of narrative nonfiction coming January 2025.

"A riveting account of the July 1776 kidnapping of frontiersman Daniel Boone’s daughter and two friends by Cherokee and Shawnee Indians. Pearl vividly evokes life on the Kentucky frontier and details how Jemima Boone and sisters Betsy and Fanny Callaway dropped clues along the trail telling the rescue party how many captors there were, and where they were being taken. During the rescue, the son of Shawnee leader Blackfish was killed; in retaliation, raids on colonial settlements increased. Months after the girls’ rescue, the Shawnee captured Daniel Boone and 28 other men from the settlement of Boonesboro and adopted many of them into the tribe. Boone became the replacement for Blackfish’s murdered son and developed a strong rapport with the Shawnee chief that lasted even after Boone made his escape. Pearl illuminates shifting alliances and betrayals among Native tribes, British soldiers, and American colonists during the early years of the Revolutionary War, and notes that Blackfish advocated diplomacy over violence and tried to turn the frontier into an 'integrated shared space.' Instead, the Kentucky settlements became 'a testing ground' for manifest destiny, with catastrophic results for the tribes. This enthralling, meticulously researched tale sheds new light on Daniel Boone and early American culture."-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Matthew's exciting first work of narrative nonfiction.

Five years after a series of Dante-inspired killings disrupted Boston, a man is found murdered in the public gardens of 1870 London with an enormous stone around his neck etched with a verse from the Divine Comedy. When more mysterious murders erupt across the city, all in the style of the punishments Dante memorialized in Purgatory, poet Christina Rossetti fears her brother, the Dante-obsessed artist and writer Gabriel Rossetti, will be the next victim. Christina enlists poets Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson, and famous scholar Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Together these unlikely investigators rush to unravel the secrets of Dante's verses in order to find Gabriel and stop the killings. When the true inspiration behind the gruesome murders is finally revealed, Christina realizes that the perpetrator has even bigger and more horrific plans than she ever imagined. A dazzling tale of intrigue from the writer Library Journal calls "the reigning king of popular literary historical thrillers," The Dante Chamber is a riveting adventure across London and through Dante. Booklist writes "Pearl again does a stunning job of transforming Dante into brilliantly staged crime fiction."

The Acclaimed Follow-Up to The Dante Club!

Mystery, celebrity, theft – and a thrilling adventure set at the ends of the earth… On the island of Samoa, in a house perched on a cliff beneath a smoldering volcano, a dying Robert Louis Stevenson labours over a new novel. It is rumored that this may be the author of Treasure Island’s greatest masterpiece. On the other side of the world this news fires the imaginations of the bookaneers, literary pirates who steal the latest manuscripts by famous writers to smuggle them to a hungry public. But a changing world means the bookaneers will soon become extinct. Two adversaries set out for the south Pacific: Pen Davenport, a tortured criminal genius haunted by his past and Belial, his nemesis. Both dream of fortune and immortality with this last and most incredible heist. Matthew Pearl's The Last Bookaneer brings alive the lost world of these doomed outlaws, with a tropical island with a violent destiny, a brewing colonial war and a reclusive genius directing events from high in his mountain compound.

"Literary fiction that is thought-provoking, enlightening, smoothly written—and a ripping good story to boot."—Seattle Times
"An ingenious thriller"—Sunday Times (London)

Boston, 1868. The Civil War may be over but a new war has begun, one between the past and the present, tradition and technology. On a former marshy wasteland, the daring Massachusetts Institute of Technology is rising, its mission to harness science for the benefit of all and to open the doors of opportunity to everyone of merit. But mysterious catastrophes begin to devastate the city. Is it sabotage by scientific means or Nature revolting against man’s attempt to control it? The disasters cast a pall over M.I.T. and force a band of the Institute’s best and brightest students to come together to track down the truth, armed with ingenuity and their unique scientific training. Studded with suspense and soaked in the rich historical atmosphere for which its author is renowned, The Technologists (winner of the 2013 Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction) is a dazzling journey into a dangerous world not so very far from our own, as the America we know today begins to shimmer into being.

"The Technologists is a marvel of moving parts."—Washington Post
"Who knew that a mystery formed around the founding of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology could be so good?"—The Globe and Mail

Boston, 1870. When news of Charles Dickens’s untimely death reaches the office of his struggling American publisher, Fields & Osgood, partner James Osgood sends his trusted clerk Daniel Sand to await Dickens’s unfinished novel–The Mystery of Edwin Drood. But when Daniel’s body is discovered by the docks and the manuscript is nowhere to be found, Osgood must embark on a transatlantic quest to unearth the novel that will save his venerable business and reveal Daniel’s killer. As they attempt to uncover Dickens’s final mystery, Osgood and his partner-in-adventure Rebecca find themselves racing the clock through a dangerous web of literary lions and drug dealers, sadistic thugs and blue bloods, and competing members of the inner circle. They soon realize that understanding Dickens’s lost ending is a matter of life and death, and the hidden key to stopping a murderous mastermind.

"Well-executed and tightly controlled"—Los Angeles Times
"Ensures excitement"—Daily Mail

The body of Edgar Allan Poe has been buried in an unmarked grave. The public, the press, even Poe's own family and friends accept the conclusion that Poe was a second-rate writer who met a disgraceful end as a drunkard. But none of this deters a young Baltimore lawyer named Quentin Clark. Quentin, an ardent admirer, discovers that Poe's last days are riddled with vital unanswered questions—that the police may be covering up. Just when Poe's death seems destined to remain a mystery, inspiration strikes—in the form of Poe's own stories. Quentin realizes he must find the one person who can solve the strange case of Poe's death: the real-life model for Poe's brilliant fictional detective character, C. Auguste Dupin, the hero of Poe's tales of crime and detection. In The Poe Shadow, Matthew Pearl has once again crossed pitch-perfect literary history with innovative mystery to create a beautifully detailed, ingeniously plotted tale of suspense.

"A masterpiece"—The Globe and Mail
"Would make Poe himself proud"—Bookpage Magazine