Recommended well written gripping story set by the sea.....

[spinachmonster]

Fiction or non fiction please. Really want to get absorbed in a good book.

Any recommendations gratefully received.

‘I let you go’ by Claire mackintosh (very gripping story and her other books are great too)

Swallows and Amazon

And also ‘the light between oceans’ by M L Steadman - read it in a day on holiday. Such an intriguing book! Film less so.

The Light Between Oceans

😂@JesusInTheCabbageVan That’s a great review. It’s been on my ‘to read list’ but the cover makes it look a bit like nature-documentary ish and I wasn’t sure I was in the mood for it.

Tim Winton's Dirt Music. Very atmospheric.

Yes to more Daphne Du Maurier - House On The Strand and also perhaps My Cousin Rachel, and The King's General?

I was conflicted over the salt path, i am verging on the entitled naive whingebag plus wild campers on the coast path piss me off.

I really enjoyed Esther Freud's The Sea House. The Shipping News is an oldie but a goodie.

It's a children's book but When Marnie was There is a classic in all sorts of ways, partly because of the sea and saltmarsh.

If you like dystopian/light sci fi and don't mind a little dark political content, I recommend Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee (2021). A review described it as, among other things, "a love letter to the waning magic and melancholy of British seaside towns" and it is, but it's a lot more too. Anyway, a desperate family move to Margate on a UK government programme offering cash to "get out of London", in a very near future that's quite believable as a lead-on from our present (rising rents, relentlessly corrupt politics on all sides, post-COVID remote everything, and accelerated climate change). Fast forward about fifteen years and the now-teenage daughter is left alone to cope when the seas are rising, beaches are blockaded against immigration, and there's no easy escape.

Mapp and Lucia by E.F.Benson.

Island by Jane rogers. I both couldn't put it down but ray needed to pace myself through some of the folk tales. Gripping and just wonderful.

Kidnapped.. Robert Louis Stevenson.

Coasting by Jonathan Raben. Not fiction but utterly absorbing. He steers a boat around the UKs coast single handed and talks about the places he visits, his life, the changing face of the UK and it's coast in particular. He has a really engaging writing style.

More oldies - Robinson Crusoe, read this with the kids recently and we all enjoyed it. And Whiskey Galore, years since I read it, but recall enjoying.
Also - Life of Pi, The Hunt for Red October, Das Boot, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Shipping News
I read 'Cod' when it first came out and spawned a new generation of pop science books - it was interesting if I recall.
The Salt Path was interesting too, I enjoyed it, but like others did question the narrative.

Thank you for mentioning Dreamland. Living in Kent, this could be our next bookclub read! Dreamland is the name of the funfair in Margate.

Gather the Daughters - Jennie Melamed
Summer in Greece - Patricia Wilson
The City of Woven Streets - Emmi Itäranta

Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier

Reef by Romesh Gunesekera is great. Lots of good food descriptions and swimming.
agree The Gift of Rain, The Sea, The Sea and Mapp and Lucia fab.

Rebecca by DDM

Some good recommendations here, I will make a list.

Another Daphne du Maurier is The Loving Spirit.

A good Arthur Ransome is We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea.

The Inn at the Edge of the World is a good easy read, although I'm struggling to remember the author at this time of night.

Fortune’s Rocks but see someone has already recommended it

A Woman Made of Snow by Elisabeth Gifford and The White Hare by Jane Johnson.
One set in Fife/Dundee and the Arctic, the other Cornwall. Both good reads.

Shutter island

Jamaica Inn and Rebecca by du Maurier