Robbins Library: Bing Square: Books With Sea Animals On The Cover

Press release from Robbins Library:

August 23, 2021

Are you participating in Adult Summer Reading and stuck on this square? We’ve got some suggestions for you! Links go to the catalog so you can see if the books are available now and request them if they’re not.

North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud (available on Overdrive)

Nathan Ballingrud’s Shirley Jackson Award winning debut collection is a shattering and luminous experience not to be missed by those who love to explore the darker parts of the human psyche. Monsters, real and imagined, external and internal, are the subject. They are us and we are them and Ballingrud’s intense focus makes these stories incredibly intense and irresistible.

These are love stories. And also monster stories. Sometimes these are monsters in their traditional guises, sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, or ourselves. The often working-class people in these stories are driven to extremes by love. Sometimes, they are ruined; sometimes redeemed. All are faced with the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to find an escape.

Jaws by Peter Benchley

“Relentless terror.” The Philadelphia Inquirer.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!From the Paperback edition.

Clickers by J.F. Gonzalez & Mark Williams

Click Click Click Click. Phillipsport, Maine is a quaint and peaceful seaside village. But when hundreds of creatures pour out of the ocean and attack, its residents must take up arms to drive the beasts back. They are the Clickers, giant venomous blood-thirsty crabs from the depths of the sea. The only warning to their rampage of dismemberment and death is the terrible clicking of their claws. But these monsters aren’t merely here to ravage and pillage. They are being driven onto land by fear. Something is hunting the Clickers. Something ancient and without mercy.The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Smith

Twelve-year-old Suzy Swanson wades through her intense grief over the loss of her best friend by investigating the rare jellyfish she is convinced was responsible for her friend’s death.

Skin Tight by Carl Hiaasen

After dispatching a pistol-packing intruder from his home with the help of a stuffed Marlin head, Mick Stranahan can’t deny that someone is out to get him. His now-deceased intruder carries no I.D., and as a former Florida state investigator, Stranahan knows there are plenty of potential culprits. His long list of enemies includes an off point hit man, a personal injury lawyer of billboard fame, a notoriously irritating TV journalist, and a fumbling plastic surgeon.

Now, if he wants to keep fishing into his golden years, Stranahan has no choice but to come out of retirement to close this one last case…

Goddess of the Sea by P.C. Cast

After her plane crashes into the sea, an Air Force Sergeant finds herself occupying the body of the mythic mermaid Undine-and falling for a sexy merman.

The Seas by Samantha Hunt

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 eleven 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.

True to myth, she finds herself in hard love with a land-bound man, an Iraq War veteran thirteen years her senior.The mesmerizing, fevered coming-of-age tale that follows will land her in jail. Her otherworldly escape will become the stuff of legend. 

With the inventive brilliance and psychological insight that have earned her international acclaim, Samantha Hunt pulls readers into an undertow of impossible love and intoxication, blurring the lines between reality and fairy tale, hope and delusion, sanity and madness.

Gyo by Junji Ito

“The floating smell of death hangs over the island. What is it? A strange, legged fish appears on the scene … So begins Tadashi and Kaori’s spiral into the horror and stench of the sea. Here is the creepiest masterpiece of horror manga ever from the creator of Uzumaki, Junji Ito. Hold your breath until all is revealed. Something’s rotten in Okinawa”– provided by publisher.

The Song of Aglaia by Anne Simon

Betrayed by her fleeting first love and her father’s cold rejection, Aglaia the Oceanide conceives at a very young age a fierce hatred of men. She is by turns a reluctant wife, a passionate lover, an absent mother, a heroic fighter, and a revolutionary queen–and through it all, her destiny is inexorably linked to the complexity of her character in this deeply human, contemporary, and iconoclastic comedy. Cartoonist Anne Simon showcases a deft touch in this astute dissection of human relationships, which weaves 19th century France, biting feminism, and the pop imagination of the Beatles into one deliciously philosophical farce, full of subversive twists and comical turns. 

This press release was produced by Robbins Library. The views expressed here are the author’s own.