The Black Book of Cyrenaica

An ancient curse. An army of the dead. A vengeful spirit that has walked the world since before the deserts died. They all come together in Libya in 1805, when a makeshift army of foreign mercenaries and U.S. Marines sets off across North Africa to rescue three hundred American sailors imprisoned by the King of Tripoli. In this haunted land, the Realm of the Hidden, the expedition is soon beset by a series of brutal and mysterious murders--at first apparently random, but becoming progressively more purposeful and troubling. Private Lemuel Sweet, a young New Englander, chronicles the hardships he and his companions endure on their march west over the sands of the Sahara. Looming ahead of them is the threat of combat in a hostile nation. But worse is the creeping suspicion Sweet feels that one of the men leading the expedition is not what he pretends to be, and that supernatural forces are at work that could mean death for him and his fellow Marines before a single shot is fired. Death...or worse.