Across Bogue Sound
Book One of The Bogue Banks Chronicles
By Mike Anthony
The island offered shelter. Survival demanded sacrifice.
About the Book
Before sunrise, Evan Mercer receives the kind of call that cannot be ignored. A fishing boat is overdue, Caleb Willis is worried about his brother, and Evan has both the mechanical knowledge and the experience on the water to help. What begins as a search for people he knows becomes his first encounter with a danger that does not stay offshore.
Evan is a boat mechanic and former Coast Guardsman, accustomed to diagnosing problems and doing what the situation requires. On North Carolina's Crystal Coast, those abilities belong to an ordinary working life of docks, engines, fishing boats, and favors exchanged between neighbors. The opening of Across Bogue Sound places that familiar life against the first signs of an unfamiliar illness.
The danger is personal before it is fully understood. Evan has a wife, Claire, and a sixteen-year-old daughter, Abigail, waiting at home. His obligation to help on the water cannot be separated from his responsibility to the people in his own kitchen. A problem that appears distant in a news report becomes harder to dismiss when it reaches the boats and households of his community.
Mike Anthony opens The Bogue Banks Chronicles with a coastal setting that is more than scenery. Bogue Sound, the mainland shore, and the barrier island shape the meaning of distance, access, and refuge. An island can offer separation from a spreading threat, but separation alone does not answer every question about survival.
This first book introduces an apocalyptic series concerned with family, duty, and the choices people face when familiar assurances begin to fail. For readers who know the Crystal Coast—or who are drawn to survival fiction grounded in a recognizable community—Across Bogue Sound begins with an ordinary act of helping someone else, and the unsettling possibility of what that help may bring home.
North Carolina coastal apocalypse fiction
Across Bogue Sound starts The Bogue Banks Chronicles: apocalyptic fiction grounded in family, duty, boats, and the search for refuge on North Carolina’s Crystal Coast. Bogue Banks is the real barrier island that includes Atlantic Beach and Emerald Isle, with Bogue Sound between the island and mainland. These place names describe the region, not an assertion that every town appears in this volume.
Read this book first, before The Mirador Season, The Severed Coast, and The Returning Shore. The series guide explains the reading order and how this survival series differs from Mike Anthony’s coastal crime thrillers.
More in The Bogue Banks Chronicles
Book 2
The Mirador Season
Coming soonThe hurricane is over, but Bogue Banks has only a month of water left. As the Miradors regroup and the Coastal Recovery Authority makes its offers, a weak call from Harkers Island reaches Evan Mercer's community.
Book 3
The Severed Coast
Coming soonFood and medicine are running out on Bogue Banks. Evan Mercer and his daughter, Abigail, must leave the island to discover which coastal communities can be trusted—and what each alliance will cost.
Book 4
The Returning Shore
Coming soonThe wells are turning salt, and the island cannot sustain its survivors forever. In the series' final book, Evan Mercer leads a return to a mainland whose people have not forgotten who closed the bridges.
Also by Mike Anthony
Explore more coastal fiction by Mike Anthony, including pirate adventures, a coming-of-age mystery, and the Cedar Shoals thriller series.
Betrayal
At 0152, Luke watches an unlit plane drop bundles on a forgotten island airstrip. Then county deputies roll in under blackout to collect them. He tells one person. By sunrise, the Sheriff's Office knows. Days later, a county cash receipt turns up with his signature forged on the line, and Luke has to prove what he saw before someone else finishes writing his story.
The Summer We Found Everything
A cedar box. A pirate ancestor. A family secret buried for nearly three hundred years. In Morehead City, North Carolina, twelve-year-old Dondi Smythwick finds the box.
Calico Creek: The Legend of the Howling Marauder and the Pirate's Secret
A coastal adventure set along the creeks and barrier islands of North Carolina — the legend of Howling Marauder and the pirate's secret, told for readers who like their maps worn at the edges.
Available Formats
Book at a Glance
- Author
- Mike Anthony
- Category
- Apocalyptic fiction
- Series
- The Bogue Banks Chronicles
- Reading position
- Book 1 of 4
- Publication date
- October 8, 2026
- Editions
- Kindle on Amazon
Reader Questions
Who is the author of Across Bogue Sound?
Across Bogue Sound is by Mike Anthony, the pen name of Dr. Dondi M. Day.
Where does Across Bogue Sound fit in the reading order?
Across Bogue Sound is Book 1 of The Bogue Banks Chronicles. Read the series in this order: Across Bogue Sound, The Mirador Season, The Severed Coast, The Returning Shore.
Where can I find Across Bogue Sound?
Use the verified purchase links on this page to see Kindle on Amazon editions. Retailer listings provide current pricing and availability.
Are Cedar Shoals and The Bogue Banks Chronicles the same series?
No. Cedar Shoals is the coastal crime-thriller series beginning with Betrayal. The Bogue Banks Chronicles is the coastal apocalypse series beginning with Across Bogue Sound. Both are by Mike Anthony, but they have separate characters and reading orders.