A Scream on the Water: A True Story of Murder in Salem

LURED ONTO A YACHT...
Although Salem, Massachusetts, once echoed with the screams of tortured women, it has long since been a quiet New England fishing village...until one warm summer day, when the peace was shattered by the cries of a young woman meeting a grisly fate.

TRAGICALLY CUT DOWN IN THE PRIME OF LIFE...
Happily married, Martha Brailsford was a lovely, talented young artist with a big heart who agreed to go for a sail with her neighbor Tom Maimoni. Little did she know that beneath his mild-mannered exterior, and behind his tearful tale of losing his wife to cancer, Maimoni was a cunning sociopath and pathological liar who had been married to four different women.

RUTHLESSLY PLUNGED INTO THE SEA...
The truth about Maimoni would surface only after Martha’s body-- nude, skeletonized, and with an anchor wrapped around it-- turned up in the traps of a local lobsterman. As tranquil, idyllic Salem reeled from the shocking, sordid discovery, women began to come forward with their own tales of Maimoni’s lies and depraved behavior.

Told with chilling detail, A Scream on the Water is the frightening account of a beloved young woman, a sadistic killer, and a violent struggle that ended in death on a dark and lonely Salem night.

Margaret Press is the author of the Salem-based mystery novels, Requiem for a Postman, Carroll & Graf 1992, and Elegy for a Thief, Carroll & Graf 1993.

Raised in California, Press holds a doctorate in linguistics from UCLA. She worked as a speech and language specialist at a Boston school before making a career move into accounting and computer programming. She is currently a senior programmer-analyst. In addition to being a writer, Press is a private pilot in her spare time and enjoys aerial photography.

Joan Noble Pinkham studied film at NYU and The AFI in Los Angeles. She taught writing for film and television in London, Dublin, New York, and Boston. A former public relations executive and broadcaster, she now lives in Amesbury, Massachusetts, where she writes nautical yarns, mysteries, historical biographies and screenplays. She owns Sea & Coast Films and Pinkham & Associates, Literary Agents and teaches comedy, mystery and screenplay writing to students from all over New England.