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Hotlists 2008
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Booklists
Lists of books, many of which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ). Additional titles of interest may be included on the lists. Titles are generally listed alphabetically by author.
Overbooked specializes in providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction. Overbooked has been online since 1994. Overbooked is a work in progress . . .
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Booklists and Suggested Reading
Shark Stars
Page Modified: August 19, 2008
Books about sharks
Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.
- MEG: A Novel of Deep Terror
Author: Alten, Steve
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $22.95 ISBN: 0385489056 Date: 1997
Kirkus
Seven miles beneath the Pacific Ocean, a prehistoric predator survives in the black depths: Megalodon - the 100-million-year-old, sixty-foot-long, twenty-ton progenitor of today's great white shark. When one of these monsters accidentally reaches the tropical head of the ocean's warm surface, only paleontologist Jonas Taylor has the knowledge and expertise to keep it from destroying everything in its path.
Additional titles: The Trench (1999), Meg: Primal Waters (2004)
Suggested Reading: If You Like Michael Crichton . . . - Lava
Author: Ball, Pamela
Publisher: Norton $ 21 ISBN: 0393040240 Date: 1997
LJ PW
At the novel's beginning, Kinau says of her husband, gone five years and with another woman, "I could not tell if I was more possessed by Ivan's absence than by the man himself". But then a bizarre incident brings Ivan back, and a new chain of passion and leavetaking inevitably spins itself out. Kinau's life is shaped by the stories and feral energy of her mother (a woman of many husbands) and by the always hovering and jealous presence of the gods. Revenge for a boy's accidental death calls for a bounty on sharks and results in a fishing frenzy. Tidal waves have wreaked havoc, and will again. A volcano carries its own portentous message. And finally, there is Hawaii itself, source of loss, of risk, and possibly of salvation. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 8.8.05 - Jaws
Author: Benchley, Peter
Publisher: Doubleday $ 9.95 ISBN: 0385047711 Date: 1974
The classic, blockbuster thriller of man-eating terror that inspired the Steven Spielberg movie and made millions of beachgoers afraid to go into the water. Experience the thrill of helpless horror again -- or for the first time!
Updated 8.8.05 - Restless Waters
Author: Speart, Jessica
Publisher: Avon $ 6.99 ISBN: 0060559551 Date: 2005
On the trail of illegal traffickers of exotic animals in Hawaii, U.S. Fish and Wildlife agent Rachel Porter stumbles upon something far more insidious and frightening--and a shark-bitten human corpse that washes up on the rocks is only the beginning.
Updated 8.8.05 - Shark Trouble: True Stories and Lessons about the Sea
Author: Benchley, Peter
Publisher: Random $ 21.95 ISBN: 0375508244 Date: 2002
In this informative book of real-life stories and practical advice, the author of Jaws draws on his more than three decades of experience on and under the sea to share stories and information about sharks and other marine animals, and to help the reader approach the ocean and its creatures with understanding and respect.
Updated 8.8.05 - The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks
Author: Casey, Susan
Publisher: Holt $ 25 ISBN: 080507581x Date: 2005
A journalist's obsession brings her to a remote island off the California coast, home to the world's most mysterious and fearsome predators-and the strange band of surfer-scientists who follow them.
Updated 8.8.05 - In the Slick of the Cricket
Author: Drumm, Russell
Publisher: Pushcart$ 25 ISBN: 1888889055 Date: 1997
Kirkus Booklist
Driven offshore by too many obituaries, a newspaper reporter takes a five-day fishing trip aboard the charter fishing boat Cricket II with Captain Frank Mundus, the godfather of Jaws. What begins as a short escape for author Russell Drumm quickly turns into a storm-tossed odyssey in which Mundus, on the eve of his retirement, relives his 40 years at sea. He recollects his ingenious methods, his weird collection of charter "Idiots", and his lasting bitterness toward Peter Benchley for never acknowledging him as the source of the Jaws story. In the Slick of the Cricket is the richer truth behind that fiction, "I hate fiction", Mundus warns the author at the start of the trip. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 8.8.05 - Twelve Days of Terror: A Definitive Investigation of the 1916 New Jersey Shark Attacks
Author: Fernicola, Richard
Publisher: Lyons $ 27.95 ISBN: 158574297x Date: 2001
Part fascinating social history, part spellbinding detective story, Twelve Days of Terror is an account of the infamous and, heretofore, unexplained New Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 that served as the horrifying real-life inspiration for Peter Benchley's Jaws.
Updated 8.8.05 - Savage Shore: Life and Death with Nicaragua's Last Shark Hunters
Author: Marriott, Edward
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 24 ISBN: 080505555x Date: 2000
Nicaragua's Atlantic coast is home to the most dangerous of fish, the bull shark, a lethal predator with a fearsome appetite and the only shark that swims in inland waters. Braving Nicaragua's hurricane-torn wilderness of mangrove swamps, Edward Marriott joins the last surviving shark fishermen to sail in a dugout canoe and fish for sharks with a hand line. As Marriott charts the life of the bull shark, its migrations, its voracious feeding patterns, and the treasures it offers -- oil for vitamins, hide for leather, and fins for soup -- he reveals lives spent in fear and awe in the shadow of a monster that can sniff fresh blood a mile away. He also tells a tale of human greed: an elemental community, battered by civil war and natural disasters, is now degraded beyond repair to the point of providing bounty for modern-day pirates. A gripping narrative of risk and adventure, a poignant record of loss and corruption, Savage Shore confirms Marriott as one of our most original and insightful travel writers. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 8.8.05 - Shark: Stories of Life and Death from the World's Most Dangerous Waters
Author: May, Nathaniel
Publisher: Thunders Mouth $ 17.95 ISBN: 1560253975 Date: 2002
From novelists to sailors to oceanographers to divers, man's encounters with sharks have produced a diverse body of gripping, often inspired writing by great names in adventure literature. Selections in this book feature Peter Matthiessen on the great white shark, and Edward Marriott on hunting man-eaters off Nicaragua.
Updated 8.8.05 - The Shark Chronicles: A Scientist Tracks the Consummate
Predator
Author: Musick, John A.
Publisher: Times $ 26 ISBN: 0805070931 Date: 2002
LJ
This captivating and educational scientific exploration challenges readers to rethink their relationship with sharks, leaving them with the question: Are humans the prey, or the predator?
Updated 8.28.02
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