Sea Adventures Fiction

Admiral Juan Valdez is the puppet master behind Venezuela's dictatorship. He has spent years modernizing Venezuela’s military while the poor of his country starved. All the while, Valdez was working toward his grand vision of seizing much of Latin America. Now, Admiral Valdez is convinced that Bolivia, Columbia, and Peru are all well within his grasp. And when the time is right, he will strike.

In the 1870s, newspaperman James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald drummed up excitement and publicity for his paper through highly publicized missions of exploration. In 1879, Bennett's idea for a voyage was his most audacious to date: the North Pole. To do this, he hired a team of naval veterans in addition to a smattering of civilians with specialized knowledge in meteorology, whaling, and naturalism. The men on board the Jeannette set off in September of 1879. This would be the last time anyone saw them for two years.

James Culdee, a career US Navy noncom who has served his country with distinction for 20 years, is suddenly and unfairly forced into a disgraceful retirement. Devastated, Culdee retreats into alcoholism until he is rescued by his daughter, Miranda, a charter boat skipper whose sloop, the Seamark, has been stolen. When Miranda learns that the Seamark has been sighted in the dangerous and primitive Flyaway Islands of the Philippines, father and daughter sail off in pursuit, on a voyage that will carry them across the Pacific.

Highliners are the elite of the fishing world, the skippers and crews who make the biggest catches—salmon, king crab, halibut, shrimp—and deliver them first to the bustling canneries of Kodiak and Dutch Harbor. For these men—and for their women—the safe eight-hour day does not exist. It never will. Some fishermen get rich, many die broke. But they find a special joy in their work that can never be matched by the easier world of the landsman.

After a recent daring escape attempt, Zak Nine and his Quom friend Erro are imprisoned in the most inescapable region of Alcatraz. The boys are locked in separate cages, hovering at the end of unbreakable chains over a boiling sea of poison. How will the boys escape their latest dilemma? Even if they break out of their cells, how will they travel across the venomous waters to safety? It's the most perilous adventure yet as the boys try to escape from Planet Alcatraz.

Cabrillo, chasing the remnants of a crashed satellite in the Argentine jungle, stumbles upon a shocking revelation. His search to untangle the mystery leads him, first, to a small island and its secret, and then much farther back, to an ancient Chinese expedition - and a curse that seems to have survived for more than 500 years. If Cabrillo's team is successful in its quest, the reward could be incalculable. If not, the only reward is death.

December 1801. The Peace of Amiens end the long war with Napoleon Bonaparte's France, but Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, is appalled by its consequences. First, he's been in the Navy since 1780 (most unwillingly, most of the time!) and at sea for the better part of nine years, since 1793, so what is a dashing and successful frigate captain to do with himself, if he's ashore on half-pay, and if so, for how long? Second, and even worse, is where will Lewrie twiddle his thumbs and be bored to death until the war begins again, as he's sure it will?

For a fellow like Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, who despises the French worse than the Devil hates Holy Water, it's hellish-hard to gain a reputation for saving them, not once but twice, when the French refugees from Haiti surrender to England rather than the vengeful ex-slave armies in November of 1803! After that, it could be "all claret and cruising" in the Caribbean, but for a home-bound sugar convoy, one so frustrating as to make even the happy-go-lucky Alan Lewrie tear his hair out, kick furniture, and curse like...well, like a sailor!

Avoided by the Coast Salish tribes for generations, Hurst Island is one of the last remnants of untracked wilderness on the British Columbia coastal frontier. Not yet overtaken by logging or commercial fishing, it is a final outpost where myth lives on, heedless of human progress or desire. As their boat sinks, Amy and Ian find themselves stranded on this island, unaware of what they are about to face.

Two years after his wife’s death, oceanographer and former navy SEAL, Atticus Young attempts to reconcile with his rebellious daughter, Giona, by taking her on the scuba dive of a lifetime - swimming with a pod of peaceful humpback whales in the Gulf of Maine. But the beauty of the sea belies a terror from the deep - a horrific creature as immense as it is ancient. There is no blood, no scream, no fight. Giona is swallowed whole by the massive jaws. Only Atticus remains to suffer the shame of the survivor and his inconsolable grief turns to an unquenchable thirst for revenge.

"Boredom is dangerous," writes Benjamin Samuel, Co-Editor of Electric Literature, in his introduction to this issue of Recommended Reading. "It can make us lazy, complacent, and if we suffer too much of it we're liable to become boring ourselves. For the whalers at sea in Anu Jindal's Not a Bad Bunch, boredom is far more insidious; according to the ship's surgeon, who narrates the story, it's an early symptom of an infectious and barbarous madness.

Bobby MacPherson, seaman second class, only 17 years old and freshly graduated from radio operator school, was naively excited by his assignment to the submarine S-37 stationed with the Asiatic Fleet. The exotic places providing bases for the American Navy - Manila, Shanghai, Tsingtao - and their strange cultures, histories, and people engaged his driving curiosity and sharp mind.

Olivia Johnson needs to get a life. She hates her job, hasn't seen her friends in ages, hasn't had a date since university and has no idea what her purpose should be. After a particularly bad day at work she decides to quit her job and take an impromptu holiday to Cornwall. Once there, she finds she doesn't want to leave...so she makes the spontaneous decision to up sticks, despite the fact that she doesn't know anyone in St. Ives and is now unemployed. Did she make the right decision or will she come to regret leaving London?

Harvey Thackerson lost his wife to a seemingly random car accident and now his teenage daughter has gone missing in the Florida Keys. When he decides to leave everything behind to find her, he discovers things about her past that he and his wife never knew. She may be in bigger danger than he thought.

Melissa Braun is a broken woman. Only wanting what’s best for her family, she’s willing to do whatever it takes to mend her fractured relationship with her abusive boyfriend. In a last ditch effort, she hopes the sun and sand of a much-needed Florida vacation will bring them and her son closer together. Patrick Braun is a demoralized kid. Quiet and sullen, he only wants his mother to see her boyfriend’s torment as it cripples everything he loves. After years of silence, he refuses to stand by and let the abuse continue to tear them apart. Hoyt Rainey is a vile man.

After the death of a childhood loved one, five best friends reunite in the small coastal town of Five Island Cove. One doesn't expect to find love with a high school crush. Another isn't prepared to find the strength she needs to take control of her life. And none of them are ready for the secrets they'll uncover at the lighthouse.

It's not on any chart, but the tropical island of Cayo Loco is the perfect place to run away from all your problems. Waking from a ganja buzz on the beach in Tulum, Tully can't believe his eyes when a 142-foot schooner emerges out of the ocean mist. At its helm is Cleopatra Highbourne, the eccentric 101-year-old sea captain who will take him to a lighthouse on a salty piece of land that will change his life forever.

The year is 1840. Twenty-three years ago, Horatio Lord Hornblower was governor of the island of St. Helena and hailer to its only prisoner, Napoleon Bonaparte. First mutual respect, and later shared tragedy, forged a clandestine friendship between the two men. Now King Louis Philippe of France has requested that the remains of the late emperor be returned, and Queen Victoria has granted that request. The French have also requested that the former-Governor Lord Hornblower attend the exhumation as the official British representative.

Captain Sir Sheridan Drake is no knight in shining armor, even if he happens to be famous for his heroism. An exiled princess with revolutionary ideas is just a convenient opportunity to get himself out of debt. Princess Olympia isn't precisely fairy-tale royalty herself; she's plump and a little shy, and desperate to do something of importance in the world. But though their meeting begins with her hopeless hero worship, a harrowing journey to the bleak edge of the world will transform them both.

From the acclaimed master of action and suspense. The all-time classic. Millions of pounds in gold bullion are being pirated in the Irish Sea. Investigations by the British Secret Service, and a sixth sense, have bought Philip Calvert to a bleak, lonely bay in the Western Highlands. But the sleepy atmosphere of Torbay is deceptive. The place is the focal point of many mysterious disappearances. Even the unimaginative Highland Police Sergeant seems to be acting a part. But why?