This is a saga of a woman whose life is dominated by the ocean. An interesting branch off of the novel Moby Dick, especially so as it's a female main character who becomes the wife of Captain Ahab a character from Moby Dick. As a child, Una Spenser is sent away from her family to live in a lighthouse but the unknown beckons and she runs away to sea disguised as a cabin boy. The pages are filled with her difficult romances and losses, the strength of her own will aligned with the ocean and her utter and complete adoration for the famous Captain Ahab.

A non-fiction piece that re-creates the summer of 1916 when a rogue great white shark attacked swimmers along the New Jersey Shore. This book reads incredibly well, intense details and obvious extensive research makes this book a serious adventure packed page turner. 

An ultimate classic of seafaring tales, The book is sailor Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that on the ship's previous voyage bit off Ahab's leg at the knee.

"There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot." This book hit hard- it tells the tale  of a girl who is abandoned as a child by her entire family to raise herself in a shack in the depths of an isolated marsh in the Carolinas. The literation in this book creates vivid images and portrays every inch and living thing of the marsh in distinctive detail. 

This book is a bit dark, sort of invoked an uneasy feeling throughout. It's about a woman named Callanish who is a "gracekeeper" who administers shoreside burials, laying the dead to their final resting place deep in the depths of the ocean. Alone on her island, she has exiled herself to a life of tending watery graves as penance for a long-ago mistake that still haunts her. 
In a world divided between those inhabiting the mainland ("landlockers") and those who float on the sea ("damplings"), loneliness has become a way of life for Callanish, until a sudden storm offshore brings change to her life, offering a new understanding of the world she lives in and the consequences of the past, while restoring hope in an unexpected future. 

At first glance, this book may look like a child's book BUT it is an absolute gem.First off it uses the Photicular process for the images which means as you turn the page you see the fish or other sea creature moving as if your watching a film. The book uses an innovative lenticular technology with sliding lenses. The result is like a movie in your hands. In addition to the awesome images- the text by Carol Kaufmann is a home run. The facts and intricate details allotted to each sea creature is impressive. 

I love this weird book. Its broody and moody and has charming literary nods to the seafaring life. Moses Rathbone possessed an otherworldly instinct for spotting the whale. But years of bad decisions by the heirs to his fortune have whittled his family down to just one surviving member: a young girl, Mercy. Her father was the last in the dynasty of New England whalers, has been lost at sea for 7 years.  Mercy's memories of her father and of the time before he left grow dimmer each day, and she spends most of her time in the attic hideaway of her reclusive Uncle Mordecai, who teaches her the secrets of Greek history and navigation through his collection of moldering books. But when a strange, violent visitor turns up one night on the widow's walk, Mercy and Mordecai are forced to flee the house and set sail on a journey that will bring them deep into the haunted history of the Rathbone family.

This is a heavy read because of its utter rawness- no fairytale good-feelings found here but packed with a chilling reality that can do a reader a good. In a tower on the New Zealand sea lives Kerewin Holmes, part Maori, part European, an artist estranged from her art, a woman in exile from her family. One night her solitude is disrupted by a visitor—a speechless, mercurial boy named Simon, who tries to steal from her and then repays her with his most precious possession. As Kerewin succumbs to Simon's feral charm, she also falls under the spell of his Maori foster father Joe, who rescued the boy from a shipwreck and now treats him with an unsettling mixture of tenderness and brutality. 

Another classic, this book illustrates Odysseus' return journey after the Trojan War to his home in the island of Ithaca off the coast of the Greek mainland. It tells of his mishap with Poseidon, who is god of the Seas. Poseidon wreaks his vengeance on Odysseus by marooning him for seven years on a lonely isle where the demi-goddess Calypso lives. An epic tale of a perilous journey on the sea back to the woman he loves and the rightful throne. 

Over the years, I've bought countless pirate books, I wish I'd found this one sooner- it's almost ALL of the pirate tales wrapped in one. 

A coming of age book that follows a young boy's perception of his summer which he spends on the cliffs of New England with a large clan of cousins. Nothing extremely captivating, but does include a great deal of nostalgic references to the connection of youth and the magic of the ocean. 

Okay- Rachel Carson was an American biologist who dedicated her life to raising awareness on environmental concerns to our ecosystems. This woman literally IGNITED national attention to pesticides affect on our water systems.  That being said- this book is like reading fields notes but with a dash of flare added in as she details her own personal connection to the creatures she is studying. However, science brought her to the sea, not vice versa and I could really tell that as she wrote- although she is inquisitive and super intelligent - she misses the real MAGIC of the sea when writing this... which is about the sea. 

Still the book has solid content on many different sea creatures. I read it in increments, dowsing it down a little by reading a fiction book in between.