Maritime Fiction

Captain Ahab is an eerily compelling madman who focuses his distilled hatred and suffering (and that of generations before him) into the pursuit of a creature as vast, dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. More than just a novel of adventure, this is a haunting social commentary populated with some of the most enduring characters in literature. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby Dick is ...

Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Ernest Hemingway's magnificent fable The Old Man and the Sea is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. Here, is a perfectly crafted story, a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements in which he lives.

A band of savage thirteen-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'objectivity'. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard this disallusionment as an...

The ultimate children's classic - long summer days filled with adventure. John, Susan, Titty and Roger sail their boat, Swallow, to a deserted island for a summer camping trip. Exploring and playing sailors is an adventure in itself but the island holds more excitement in store. Two fierce Amazon pirates, Nancy and Peggy, challenge them to war and a summer of battles and alliances ensues. 'My childhood simp...

This title includes classic adventure stories by Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, Stephen Crane, Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London that mix with marvellously imaginative tales by Isak Dinesen, Patricia Highsmith and J. G. Ballard. Robert Olen Butler explores the memories of a Titanic victim who has become part of the sea that swallowed him; Ray Bradbury's "The Fog Horn" summons something primeval and lo...

Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic. But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab's appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security o...

'A masterly study of grief, memory and love recollected' Professor John Sutherland, Chair of Judges, Man Booker Prize 2005 When art historian Max Morden returns to the seaside village where he once spent a childhood holiday, he is both escaping from a recent loss and confronting a distant trauma. The Grace family had appeared that long-ago summer as if from another world. Mr and Mrs Grace, with their worldl...

Christopher Martin, the sole survivor of a torpedoed destroyer, is stranded upon a rock in the middle of the Atlantic. Pitted against him are the sea, the sun, the night cold and the terror of his isolation. To drink there is a pool of rain water; to eat there are weeds and sea anemones. Through the long hours with only himself to talk to, Martin must try to assemble the truth of his fate, piece by terrible...

It was just another day in the life of a small Atlantic resort until the terror from the deep came to prey on unwary holiday makers. The first sign of trouble - a warning of what was to come - took the form of a young woman's body, or what was left of it, washed up on the long, white stretch of beach ...A summer of terror has begun. Peter Benchley's JAWS first appeared in 1974. It has sold over twenty milli...

Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", regarded by many to be first novel in English, is also the original tale of a castaway struggling to survive on a remote desert island. This "Penguin Classics" is edited with an introduction and notes by John Richetti. The sole survivor of a shipwreck, Robinson Crusoe is washed up on a desert island. In his journal he chronicles his daily battle to stay alive, as he conquer...

Set sail for the read of your life ...Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. Master and Commander is the first of Patrick O'Brian's now famous Aubrey/Maturin novels, regarded by many as the greatest series of historical novels ever written. It establishes the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey RN and Stephen Maturin, wh...

New to Penguin Classics, the great underwater adventure story in a stunning clothbound edition with original images. In this thrilling adventure tale by the 'Father of Science Fiction', three men embark on an epic journey under the sea with the mysterious Captain Nemo aboard his submarine the Nautilus. Over the course of their fantastical voyage, they encounter the lost city of Atlantis, the South Pole and...

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. Patrick O'Brian is regarded by many as the greatest historical novelist now writing. Post Captain, the second novel in his remarkable Aubrey/Maturin series, led Mary Renault to write: `Master and Commander raised dangerously high expectations; Post Captain triumphantly surp...

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. Commissioned to rescue Governor Bligh of Bounty fame, Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend and surgeon, Stephen Maturin, sail the Leopard to Australia with a hold full of convicts. Among them is a beautiful and dangerous spy - and a treacherous disease which decimates the cre...

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of their beginning, with Master and Commander, these evocative stories are being re-issued in paperback with smart new livery. This is the tenth book in the series.

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of their beginning, with Master and Commander, these evocative stories are being re-issued in paperback with smart new livery. This is the eighteenth book in the series.

"Hornblower and the Atropos" skippering the flagship for Nelson's funeral on the Thames is not Hornblower's idea of thrilling action. But soon his orders come, and he sets sail for the Mediterranean in the Atropos. 'Battle, storm, shipwreck, disease - what were the chances that he would never come back again?' "The happy return" Hornblower sails the South American waters and comes face to face with a mad, m...

The Second Horatio Hornblower Tale of the Sea The nineteenth century dawns and the Napoleonic Wars rage as Horatio Hornblower is ordered to the Caribbean and dangerous waters. New Lieutenant Hornblower's latest ship is HMS Renown, a sound vessel whose captain is unfortunately of rather unsound mind. When ordered to attack a Spanish anchorage, the chain of command breaks down and it requires all of Hornblo...

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN BURNSIDE When Charles Arrowby retires from his glittering career in the London theatre, he buys a remote house on the rocks by the sea. He hopes to escape from his tumultuous love affairs but unexpectedly bumps into his childhood sweetheart and sets his heart on destroying her marriage. His equilibrium is further disturbed when his friends all decide to come and keep him compan...

A brilliant, action-packed and gripping novel of Charles Darwin's voyage on the Beagle - longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 1831 Charles Darwin set off in HMS Beagle under the command of Captain Robert Fitzroy on a voyage that would change the world.