Sea Fiction

On a dark night along a lonely stretch of coast a small ship sends two people ashore. Their purpose is assassination. They have been hired by two of the most dangerous men alive to alter the balance of power in the world. If they succeed, the consequences will affect the destinies of empires, and lives both great and small.

A sailor recalls the monstrous terror that lay at the bottom of the deep in this, Lovecraft’s earliest tale of unspeakable horror from outside our universe.

Everyone believes Adam to be something he’s not. Sometimes that’s because he’s told them a story. Sometimes he’s told himself one. But when Adam joins an Alaskan fishing crew that’s promising quick money, the dangerous work and harsh lifestyle strip away all fabrications and force a dark-hearted exploration of who he really is. On the unforgiving Bering Sea, Adam finds the adventure and authenticity of a fisherman’s life revelatory. The labor required to seize bounty from the ocean invigorates him, and the often crude comradery accompanies a welcome, hard-earned wisdom.

In 1944, American naval officer Lt. Wyatt Paxton arrives in London to prepare for the Allied invasion of France. He works closely with Dorothy Fairfax, a "Wren" in the Women's Royal Naval Service. Dorothy pieces together reconnaissance photographs with thousands of holiday snapshots of France - including those of her own family's summer home - in order to create accurate maps of Normandy. Maps that Wyatt will turn into naval bombardment plans. As the two spend concentrated time together in the pressure cooker of war, their deepening friendship threatens to turn to love.

Deadly storms have ravaged Mina’s homeland for generations. Floods sweep away entire villages, while bloody wars are waged over the few remaining resources. Her people believe the Sea God, once their protector, now curses them with death and despair. In an attempt to appease him, each year a beautiful maiden is thrown into the sea to serve as the Sea God’s bride, in the hopes that one day the “true bride” will be chosen and end the suffering.

Moored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south, the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit. She's often the subject of cruel local gossip. Her father, a sailor, walked into the ocean 11 years earlier and never returned, leaving his wife and daughter to keep a forlorn vigil. Surrounded by water and beckoned by the sea, she clings to what her father once told her: that she is a mermaid.

Ivy discovers a black slime in her bag, and immediately, wonders how to care for it, nevertheless how to carry it. Thankfully, she can send faxes to her friends to get the fantasy 411 on the care and keeping of a brand-new friend! And as the bitter, cold winter turns to a warm, welcoming spring, Ivy sets their eyes on new horizons and new places. Now, where will their adventures take them next?

Skadi first met her husband-to-be with blades in hand on the opposite side of a battle. She lost, and he claimed his prize. To her horror, the king of the shadow elven agrees to marry her off to Jonas, a prince in the fae realms, as a way to unite their kingdoms against a shared enemy—the light elves. Skadi knows the marriage is nothing but a political game. Feelings won't come into play. Except her new husband makes not falling in love... challenging. When new threats arise, Skadi must decide either to love her enemy or keep him alive by betraying him to another.

Emily, David, Mason, Lisa, and Mark head to the California coast to find a boat back to Canada. They all felt that it would be much easier and quicker to sail home rather than go over land with the others. They were wrong. The trek through the lawless city to get to the coast is only the first step. Hardship and loss await as the teens struggle to overcome both the challenge of the journey and threats from within. The trip home will change them all - for good or bad, as the stranded teens make for home by sea.

Successful but shy, Seattle art dealer Mattie Sharpe fell hard for handsome, outspoken, professional adventurer Hugh Abbott. When he broke her heart and returned to his South Sea island home, Mattie vowed she'd only meet him again over her - or better, his - dead body. When they do meet again, it's over someone else's dead body - and now they're running for their lives through a tropical paradise. Hugh's talking fast to make up for his mistake. Mattie's not listening...until his gentle touch ignites a white-hot fusion, and she gives in. But Hugh's past is catching up with them.

H.M.S. Surprise, the third in O'Brian's acclaimed Aubrey-Maturin series, follows the variable fortunes of Captain Jack Aubrey's career in Nelson's navy, as he attempts to hold his ground against admirals, colleagues, and the enemy, and accepts a commission to convey a British ambassador to the East Indies. The voyage leads him and his friend Stephen Maturin to the strange sights and smells of the Indian subcontinent, and through the archipelago of Spice Islands where the French have a near-overwhelming local superiority.

In late 1756, as the British government collapses in the aftermath of the loss of Minorca, and the country and navy are thrown into political chaos, a small force of ships is sent to the West Indies to reinforce the Leeward Islands Squadron. Captain Edward Carlisle and his first lieutenant George Holbrooke are fresh from the Mediterranean and their capture of a powerful French man-of-war. Their new frigate Medina has orders to join a squadron commanded by a terminally ill commodore. Their mission: a near-suicidal assault on a strong Caribbean island fortress.

Terrorism. Acts of oppression. The threat of nuclear war. The US Navy-designed Goliath is a futuristic nuclear stealth submarine in the shape of a stingray. Simon Covah, a brilliant scientist whose entire family were the victims of terrorism, has hijacked the sub. Believing violence is a disease, Covah aims to use the Goliath and its cache of nuclear weapons to dictate policy to the world regarding the removal of oppressive regimes and nuclear weapons. Could the threat of violence forge a lasting peace?

When Michael Moorcock began chronicling the adventures of the albino sorcerer Elric, last king of decadent Melniboné, and his sentient vampiric sword, Stormbringer, he set out to create a new kind of fantasy adventure, one that broke with tradition and reflected a more up-to-date sophistication of theme and style. The result was a bold and unique hero: a rock-and-roll antihero who would channel all the violent excesses of the '60s into one enduring archetype.

It was a day like any other. Except it was our last.... It’s on this day that Pounce discovers that he is, in fact, disposable. Pounce, a styilsh "nannybot" fashioned in the shape of a plush anthropomorphic tiger, has just found a box in the attic. His box. The box he'd arrived in when he was purchased years earlier, and the box in which he'll be discarded when his human charge, eight-year-old Ezra Reinhart, no longer needs a nanny. As Pounce ponders his suddenly uncertain future, the pieces are falling into place for a robot revolution that will eradicate humankind.

The Indialantic by the Sea Hotel has a 100-year-old history on beautiful Melbourne Beach, Florida, and more than a few guests seem to have been there from the start. When Liz Holt returns home after an intense decade in New York, she's happy to be surrounded by the eccentric clientele and loving relatives that populate her family-run inn. But that patronage decreases by one when a filthy rich guest is discovered dead in her oceanfront suite.

It was the end of World War II. FDR's New Deal had redefined American politics. Taxes were at an all-time high. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had created a fear of total annihilation. The rise of secret government agencies and sanctions on business had many watching their backs. America's sense of freedom was diminishing... and many were desperate to take that freedom back.

The Larkin family isn't just lucky - they persevere. At least that's what Violet and her younger brother, Sam, were always told. When the Lyric sank off the coast of Maine, their great-great-great grandmother didn't drown like the rest of the passengers. No, Fidelia swam to shore, fell in love, and founded Lyric, Maine. One beautiful summer day, brilliant, sensitive Sam attempts to take his own life. Shipped back to Lyric while Sam is in treatment and desperate to make amends, Violet embarks on a wildly ambitious mission: locate the Lyric.

Life for Roz and the animals on their island is perfect. But when mysterious, dangerous waters surround the island, the animals are forced inland to fight over dwindling resources. Roz calms and organizes the animals, but the poison tide takes a terrible toll on the island. So the wild robot sets out across the ocean, determined to stop the poison tide. During her journey, Roz encounters amazing geological formations and incredible creatures, and she sees the devastation caused by the toxic waters. Can the wild robot save the ocean and her island and everything she loves?

Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.