The Cruise Manifest

By Tessa Hart

Nora Vance boarded the Calloway Star to get away from a career that had nearly collapsed because she noticed something other people wanted ignored.

Then she notices something else.

A navigation error in the cruise line's app briefly exposes an administrative passenger list. One entry is wrong: a passenger already aboard has a processing date that hasn't happened yet.

Nora takes a screenshot.

What begins as a technical anomaly becomes a pattern-passengers changing cabins, identities with no history, unexplained activity near the medical bay, and a private operation hidden inside the ordinary machinery of an eleven-night Caribbean cruise.

Freelance journalist Declan Marsh has been following a related lead for months. Together, he and Nora uncover MANIFEST Protocol: an off-the-books identity reassignment network capable of helping people disappear completely.

Some of its clients may desperately need that escape.

Others may be using it to avoid consequences.

And someone aboard the ship knows Nora is looking.

With the voyage approaching its final ports, Nora must decide what evidence is strong enough to expose, whom she can trust, and whether shutting down an illegal system is still the right thing to do when that system may be protecting people the law has already failed.

The Cruise Manifest is a character-driven investigative mystery about hidden systems, institutional failure, second chances, and the cost of seeing clearly.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HF86CMHL
• ISBN13: 9798192617977
• Release Date: August 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"