Sea Fiction

Darting back and forth across the icy North Atlantic, Compass Rose played a deadly cat-and-mouse game with packs of German U-boats lying in wait beneath the ocean waves. Packed with tension and vivid descriptions of agonizing U-boat hunts, this tale of the most bitter and chilling campaign of the war tells of ordinary men who had to master their own fears before they could face a brutal menace - one that would strike without warning from the deep.

When a top secret, undercover mission goes wrong for one of the company's operatives, Ballantine must call on Team Grendel and the crew of the Beowulf III to take down a drug lord and stop Southern California from being overrun by a new substance more addictive and deadly than any drug on the planet. But things are never that simple as Team Grendel find they are under siege by cloned Megalodon sharks that developed a taste for the new substance, sending the monsters on a drug fueled rampage of bloody violence along the Baja Mexico coastline.

In spring 1918, Lieutenant Colin Mabry, a British soldier working with MI8 after suffering injuries on the front, receives a message by carrier pigeon. It is from Jewel Reyer, the woman he once loved and who saved his life - a woman he believed to be dead. Traveling to France to answer her urgent summons, he desperately hopes this mission will ease his guilt and restore the courage he lost on the battlefield. Colin is stunned, however, to discover the message came from Jewel's half sister, Johanna.

Two cyclists die on the Somerset Levels, and the Exham bakery gets the blame. Libby Forest runs into danger as she sets out to solve the mystery, save the bakery and rescue her career, helped by Bear, the enormous Carpathian Sheepdog, Fuzzy, an aloof marmalade cat, and the handsome, secretive Max Ramshore. Set in the coastal resort of Exham on Sea, Murder on the Levels features a cast of local characters, including Mandy the teenage Goth, her new boyfriend, Steve, Frank the baker, and Detective Sergeant Joe Ramshore, Max's estranged son.

At the heart of this vibrant saga is an immense ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean, its purpose to fight China's vicious 19th-century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts.

Menedemos, the young dashing sea captain, and his helper, the scholarly Sostratos, are sea-traders from the Greek island of Rhodes. Fearless sailors, they will travel any distance to make a profit or to search for rich treasures. While they trade in fineries such as wine and silk (and even, to the chagrin of many, peacocks), they live in dangerous times with pirates, thieves, and barbarians.

Following the discovery of her relationship with the infamous Sea Shadow Drew Knight, Sea Slayer Kelia Starling is condemned to a life of servitude. Kelia is still investigating why the Society murdered her father, while Drew has secretly visited her to call on the favor Kelia owes him. But as Kelia's research intensifies and her missions intersect, Kelia is confronted with a disturbing realization: Before her father's death, he'd created a wicked breeding program that forces relations between Shadows and irredeemable Sightless. And Kelia's just been placed in the program.

For thousands of years, we have set out sailing for all kinds of reasons - for battle, for infinite wealth, for the excitement of exploring the unknown, and for escape from the mundane. We have always had a primal relationship with the sea - even those who have never been to sea remain fascinated by the seafaring life and tales of salty adventure. Now in a brand–new series collection, The Best Sailing Stories Ever Told brings together such diverse authors as Charles Dickens, Jack London, John Masefield, Stephen Crane, Herman Melville, and dozens more.

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.

Summer comes to Ireland, and an uneasy peace holds at Loch Garman. The Northmen, eager to get to sea, work relentlessly on their ships, with the aid of their unlikely allies, the Irish, who are just as eager to see them go. But not everyone is willing to just let them sail away. Certain that God demands the heathens be punished, the one-eyed warrior turned monk Brother Becc is determined that Thorgrim and his men will not simply go free. And when another band of raiders arrives, Becc finds the excuse he needs to take action.

Leah is changed. Months earlier, she left for a routine expedition, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp.

It was just a stroll on the hill - until the mist came down. In Murder on the Tor, the third Exham on Sea mystery, clues to a present-day crime lead baker and chocolatier Libby Forest back into the historic past of mysterious Glastonbury, a place of myth and legend where truth merges with fable. With the enormous Carpathian Sheepdog, Bear, at her side, she sets out to unravel the mystery and bring the killer to justice.

At the opening of a voyage filled with disaster and delight, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are in pursuit of a privateer sailing under American colours through the Great South Sea. Stephen's objective is to set the revolutionary tinder of South America ablaze to relieve the pressure on the British government which has blundered into war with the young and uncomfortably vigorous United States. The shock and barbarity of hand-to-hand fighting are sharpened by O'Brian's exact sense of period, his eye for landscape and his feel for a ship under sail.

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.

Fed up with an outlaw existence, Calico Jack Rackam swears off the pirate life, but he hasn’t reckoned with Anne Bonny, a woman who would as soon stab a man as give him a good tumble—that is, unless he’s a pirate. Soon Jack finds himself out on the high seas again, with Anne by his side and his men spoiling for action. And when they capture a Dutch merchant ship, they pick up an unlikely crewmate as well, an expert sword fighter and topmast seaman who has a secret: he just happens to be a woman named Mary. Together they cut a bold swath through the West Indies.

Rumors begin to spread of a species of hyperintelligent, dangerous octopus that may have developed its own language and culture. Marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching cephalopod intelligence, will do anything for the chance to study them. The transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where the octopuses were discovered, off from the world. Dr. Nguyen joins DIANIMA’s team on the islands: a battle-scarred security agent and the world’s first android.

In the winter of 1952, New England was battered by the most brutal nor’easter in years. As the weather wreaked havoc on land, the freezing Atlantic became a wind-whipped zone of peril, setting the stage for one of the most heroic rescue stories ever lived. On February 18, while the storm raged, two oil tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer, were in the same horrifying predicament. Built with “dirty steel,” and not prepared to withstand such ferocious seas, both tankers split in two, leaving the dozens of men on board utterly at the Atlantic’s mercy.

This thrilling companion to Iain Lawrence's award-winning The Wreckers and The Smugglers plunges listeners into high-sea action and intrigue. After 17-year-old John Spencer sets out on his first voyage to foreign lands, he and his crew are wary when they come across a stranger named Horn rowing a lifeboat in the middle of nowhere. What is the man hiding?

The Log from the Sea of Cortez is the exciting day-by-day account of Steinbeck's trip to the Gulf of California with biologist Ed Ricketts. Drawn from the longer Sea of Cortez, it is a wonderful combination of science, philosophy, and high-spirited adventure.

When the flood hits, America's East Coast is evacuated by every means possible. Brooklyn paramedic Travis Cooke had dreamed of reuniting his family, but not like this. Escaping New York with his son and the ex-wife he still loves - and her new husband - they find themselves evacuated on the luxury cruise ship, the Festival of the Waves. Hours later, the Festival lies dead in the open Atlantic: no power, no communications, and nowhere near enough food.