The Amalfi Curse

The Amalfi Curse is a novel by the American writer Sarah Penner, published in 2025. It is set on the Amalfi Coast of Italy, where the sea has been taking ships for centuries and where the local stories have had a long time to grow.

Haven Ambrose is a nautical archaeologist. Her official reason for being in the village of Positano is the wrecks that lie along that stretch of coast, and what she is actually looking for is a set of gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive, which she is hunting without telling anybody.

Not long after she arrives the town is troubled by strange maelstroms and by a run of misfortunes. The question is whether it is the weather, which is bad enough in that part of the world, or something else entirely.

As the search goes on, Haven comes across the story of a woman who lived centuries earlier and who used the legendary art of stregheria, a way of working magic through the ocean, to try to save the man she loved and the village she came from. The novel follows her as she works out whether that old story has anything to do with what is happening now.