The Floating City

The world's largest ship. A transatlantic voyage. And a deadly secret in the hold.The Great Eastern is an engineering marvel-700 feet of iron and steam, carrying thousands across the Atlantic at unprecedented speed. When a French gentleman boards this "floating city" from Liverpool to New York in 1867, he expects to document technological wonder.Instead, he discovers human drama as vast as the ocean.Captain Fabian loves Ellen Hodges but cannot act-she is married. Ellen is desperate to escape her husband Harry Drake, a villain who forced her into marriage through deception. Drake now pursues her aboard the Great Eastern, determined to reclaim her or destroy everyone rather than let her go free.As the ship steams westward, the narrator becomes entangled in their struggle. Passion and obsession play out against Victorian engineering's greatest triumph-but somewhere in the darkness, Drake prepares catastrophic revenge.Jules Verne's unusual novel combines meticulous documentary observation (based on his 1867 voyage aboard the actual Great Eastern) with melodramatic intrigue. Less speculative than his famous science fiction, The Floating City captures both the technological wonder of the steamship age and timeless human conflict.From the author of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea-a voyage into Victorian engineering and the depths of obsession.