What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Riddle of the Sands
Erskine Childers · 288 pages
Childers's lone masterpiece, THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS, considered the first modern spy thriller, is recognisable as the brilliant forerunner of the realism of Graham Greene and John le Carre. Its unique flavour comes from its fine characterization,richly authentic background of inshore sailing and vivid evocation of the late 1890s - an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and intrigue that was soon to le
Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Herman Melville · 420 pages
A classic of the sea, telling of the pursuit of Moby Dick, the white whale who defied capture.
The Pearl
John Steinbeck · 118 pages
Based on a Mexican folktale, this is the story of a great pearl found by a poor fisherman, the sorrow it brought to his family, and how it was lost again.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Jules Verne · 352 pages
A nineteenth-century science fiction tale of an electric submarine, its eccentric captain, and undersea world, which anticipated many of the scientific achievements of the twentieth century.
Das Boot
Lothar-Gunther Buchheim · 563 pages
The Aspern Papers
Henry James · 108 pages
With a decaying Venetian villa as a backdrop, an anonymous narrator relates his obsessive quest for the personal documents of a deceased Romantic poet, one Jeffrey Aspern. Led by his mission into increasingly unscrupulous behavior, he is ultimately faced with relinquishing his heart's desire or attaining it at an overwhelming price.
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway · 127 pages
Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the tale of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. This story of heroic endeavour won Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. It stands as a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements.
The Willows
Algernon Blackwood · 59 pages
After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves th
At the Mountains of Madness
H.P. Lovecraft · 185 pages
Introduction by China MievilleLong acknowledged as a master of nightmarish visions, H. P. Lovecraft established the genuineness and dignity of his own pioneering fiction in 1931 with his quintessential work of supernatural horror, At the Mountains of Madness. The deliberately told and increasingly chilling recollection of an Antarctic expedition's uncanny discoveries--and their encounter with unto
The Island of Dr. Moreau
H.G. Wells · 155 pages
Ranked among the classic novels of the English language and the inspiration for several unforgettable movies, this early work of H. G. Wells was greeted in 1896 by howls of protest from reviewers, who found it horrifying and blasphemous. They wanted to know more about the wondrous possibilities of science shown in his first book, The Time Machine, not its potential for misuse and terror. In The Is
Carmilla
J. Sheridan Le Fanu · 86 pages
First published as a serial in The Dark Blue (1871–72), *Carmilla* is narrated by a young woman preyed upon by a female vampire named Carmilla, later revealed to be Mircalla, Countess Karnstein (Carmilla is an anagram of Mircalla). The character is a prototypical example of the lesbian vampire, expressing romantic desires toward the protagonist. The novella notably never acknowledges homosexuality
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Truman Capote · 160 pages
Published with three short stories this novella cemented Capote’s position at the forefront of American literature. It is the story of a friendship between New York neighbours, good time girl Holly Golightly and the unnamed male narrator.
Riden's Chapter
Tricia Levenseller · 12 pages
The Vampyre
John William Polidori · 60 pages
The Vampyre*, a short gothic novel by John William Polidori, was first published in 1819 and is considered the first modern vampire story. The story features Lord Ruthven, a seductive aristocrat with unnatural powers over men and women, and an insatiable thirst for blood. Polidori's innovative portrayal of the vampire as a Byronic figure is said to have set the template for the modern vampire.
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens · 114 pages
A reprinting of the 1843 first edition, complete with the original illustrations, is supplemented by over eighty related sketches and annotations on and analyses of the text and historical notes on the writing of "The Christmas Carol."
A Descent into the Maelstrom
Edgar Allan Poe · 43 pages
"A Descent into the Maelström" is an 1841 short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. In the tale, a man recounts how he survived a shipwreck and a whirlpool. It has been grouped with Poe's tales of ratiocination and also labeled an early form of science fiction.
Ballad of the Salt Sea: A Corto Maltese adventure
Hugo Pratt · 169 pages
The Sea Wolf
Jack London · 321 pages
Jack London's novel The Sea Wolf became an instant bestseller on its release in 1904. Ambrose Bierce wrote "The great thing - and it is among the greatest of things - is that tremendous creation, Wolf Larsen...the hewing out and setting up of such a figure is black for a man to do in one lifetime." The Sea Wolf tells the story of intellectual Humphrey van Weyden's toughening and growth in the face
The Toilers of the Sea
Victor Hugo · 696 pages
Gilliat is an accomplished sailor, but due to a mysterious mother and a home locally regarded as haunted, his acceptance into Guernsey society is limited. That isolation doesn’t stop him from falling for Déruchette, the “neat and delicate and pretty” niece of local ferry-owner Mess Lethierry. When the ship is involved in a catastrophic incident, Déruchette announces that she will marry the man who

