Looking back, author Bernhard J. Abrahamsson cannot say exactly why, at age fourteen, he chose a seafaring life. Perhaps, the choice was less the result of deliberate design and pursuit than of circumstances that led him in that direction. In The Beckoning Sea, Abrahamsson, a native of Sweden, shares the short stories and vignettes from a youth spent dreaming of seeing the world. This memoir narrates his experiences when he joined the Swedish Merchant Marine and sailed all over the world on Swedish and Israeli merchant ships through the 1950s. He passed the sea captain's exam in 1953 and was licensed as a captain in 1958, reaching the rank of commander in the Swedish Naval Reserve before becoming a US citizen. Funny and sad events mesh to form a picture of seafaring as it once was--of a lifestyle that no longer exists. The Beckoning Sea offers stories of friendship, loss and madness at sea, the forces of nature, and life in the rough ports of the Baltic coal trade immediately after World War II. A tale of a boy's journey to adulthood, The Beckoning Sea also contains a collection of memories and often comical stories from Abrahamsson's own second chapter--his life after leaving the sea and planting his feet on firm ground.

Perhaps the closest a human being comes to visiting another planet is to descend into the sea.In Soundings, Kennedy Warne connects his lifelong exploration of the underwater world with a global story of humanity' s relationship with the sea.Drawing on more than 20 years of fieldwork for National Geographic, he shares experiences that range from diving with harp seals under the sea ice of the Gulf of St Lawrence to following the legendary &‘ sardine run' along South Africa' s Wild Coast; from watching turret-building ghost crabs in Arabia to witnessing the impact of dynamite fishing in the Philippines; from swimming with crocodiles in the Okavango Delta to finding seahorses on the Eastern Cape.From a myriad underwater encounters a wider conversation emerges about human engagement with the sea. One question dominates: How can we care for and reconnect with the oceans around us?

Is she on the rebound, or has Ashley found the man of her dreams? When Ben left her at the altar, Ashley was sure her heart was broken, sure life would never be the same again. So when famous author Anthony Adler asks her to help him finish up his latest novel, she leaves her editorial position in New York and moves to Hawaii. Life in Hawaii is everything Ashley imagined—and more. She finds herself irresistibly drawn to Anthony despite his dark obsession with his deceased wife. Secrets and uncertainties keep distance between them, and when Ben shows up again, Ashley finds herself torn between the man she loved and the one she loves now. Only God can make this twisted path straight, but will anyone let Him?

New York Times bestselling author P. C. Cast presents the first novel in her Goddess Summoning series... Home alone on the night of her twenty-fifth birthday, Air Force Sergeant Christine Canady yearned for something to cure her loneliness. After drinking too much champagne, she recited a divine invocation to revive her humdrum life. But how was she to know the spell would actually work? When her plane crashes into the ocean, CC’s life changes forever. She awakens, bewildered, to find herself in a legendary time and place ruled by magic—and in the body of the mythic mermaid Undine. But danger lurks in the waters, ready to swallow CC whole. Taking pity on her, the goddess Gaea turns her into a damsel, that she might seek shelter on land. But when a dashing knight comes to CC’s rescue—a dream-come-true she should be falling for—she instead aches for the sea and the darkly sexy merman who’s stolen her heart…

The fifth in the Wiki Coffin series finds the U.S. Exploring Expedition off Cape Horn, a grim outpost made still more threatening by the report of a corpse on a drifting iceberg, closely followed by a gruesome death on board. Was it suicide, or a particularly brutal murder? Wiki investigates, only to find himself fighting desperately for his own life.

This book examines what literature and film reveal about the urban USA. Subjects include culture, class, race, crime, and disaster.