The Island

The Island

Peter Benchley

Mystery & Thrillers

Blair Maynard decides to investigate the mystery of why so many boats disappear in the Bermuda Triangle of the Caribbean. He takes his son with him to the area on "vacation" and, while fishing, both are attacked by an unkempt man and forcibly brought to an uncharted island. On the island, Blair discovers the terrible truth: the inhabitants are a savage group of pirates, made up of outcasts, thieves, and murderers, who have hidden from the outside world, raiding boats to sustain themselves, since the 1700s.
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Peter Benchley's Creature

Peter Benchley's Creature

Peter Benchley

Mystery & Thrillers

At a small marine institute off the coast of Connecticut, only marine biologist Simon Chase realizes that a sixteen-foot pregnant Great White is feeding in the area. But even Simon doesn't know that a far deadlier creature is about to come out of the deep and threaten everything he cares for. A creature whose malevolence is unthinkable. Whose need to feed is insatiable. And whose relentless hunt for prey is unstoppable. Nearly twenty-five years after his huge bestseller Jaws, the master of the deep has done it again, letting loose a chilling new predator that only he could create. Drawing on his singular knowledge of the sea, science, and history, Peter Benchley masterfully spins a suspense-filled novel that hits you on a primal level, makes your heart pound, and leaves your blood running cold.
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Rummies

Rummies

Peter Benchley

Mystery & Thrillers

This major novel, written with sophistication and wonderful wit, has some of the flavor of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, as it tells the story of a group of people who meet at a drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation clinic.
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Jaws

Jaws

Peter Benchley

Mystery & Thrillers

Here is Peter Benchley’s classic suspense novel of shark versus man, which was made into the blockbuster Steven Spielberg movie. The Jaws phenomenon changed popular culture and continues to inspire a growing interest in sharks and the oceans today. When Peter Benchley wrote Jaws in the early 1970s, he meticulously researched all available data about shark behavior. Over the ensuing decades, Benchley was actively engaged with scientists and filmmakers on expeditions around the world as they expanded their knowledge of sharks. Also during this time, there was an unprecedented upswing in the number of sharks killed to make shark-fin soup, and Benchley worked with governments and nonprofits to sound the alarm for shark conservation. He encouraged each new generation of Jaws fans to enjoy his riveting tale and to channel their excitement into support and protection of these magnificent, prehistoric apex predators. This edition of Jaws contains bonus content from Peter Benchley’s archives, including the original typed title page, a brainstorming list of possible titles, a letter from Benchley to producer David Brown with honest feedback on the movie adaptation, and excerpts from Benchley’s book Shark Trouble highlighting his firsthand account of writing Jaws, selling it to Universal Studios, and working with Steven Spielberg. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A tightly written, tautly paced study of terror [that] makes us tingle.”—The Washington Post “Powerful . . . [Benchley’s] story grabs you at once.”—The New York Times Book Review “Relentless terror . . . You’d better steel yourself for this one. It isn’t a tale for the faint of heart.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer   “Pure engrossment from the very opening . . . a fine story told with style, class, and a splendid feeling for suspense.”—Chicago Sun-Times
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Shark Trouble: True Stories and Lessons About the Sea

Shark Trouble: True Stories and Lessons About the Sea

Peter Benchley

Mystery & Thrillers

Master storyteller Peter Benchley combines high adventure with practical information in Shark Trouble, a book that is at once a thriller and a valuable guide to being safe in, on, under, and around the sea. The bestselling author of Jaws, The Deep, and other works draws on more than three decades of experience to share information about sharks and other marine animals. “Shark attacks on human beings generate a tremendous amount of media coverage,” Benchley writes, “partly because they occur so rarely, but mostly, I think, because people are, and always have been, simultaneously intrigued and terrified by sharks. Sharks come from a wing of the dark castle where our nightmares live—deep water beyond our sight and understanding—and so they stimulate our fears and fantasies and imaginations.” Benchley describes the many types of sharks (including the ones that pose a genuine threat to man), what is and isn’t known about shark behavior, the odds against an attack and how to reduce them even further—all reinforced with the lessons he has learned, the mistakes he has made, and the personal perils he has encountered while producing television documentaries, bestselling novels, and articles about the sea and its inhabitants. He tells how to swim safely in the ocean, how to read the tides and currents, what behavior to avoid, and how to survive when danger suddenly strikes. He discusses how to tell children about sharks and the sea and how to develop, in young and old alike, a healthy respect for the ocean. As Benchley says, “The ocean is the only alien and potentially hostile environment on the planet into which we tend to venture without thinking about the animals that live there, how they behave, how they support themselves, and how they perceive us. I know of no one who would set off into the jungles of Malaysia armed only with a bathing suit, a tube of suntan cream, and a book, and yet that’s precisely how we approach the oceans.” No longer. Not after you’ve read Shark Trouble. From the Hardcover edition.
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The Girl of the Sea of Cortez: A Novel

The Girl of the Sea of Cortez: A Novel

Peter Benchley

Mystery & Thrillers

On an island in the Gulf of California, an intrepid young woman named Paloma carries a special legacy from her father—a deep understanding of the sea and a sixth sense about the need to protect it. Every day, Paloma paddles her tiny boat into the ocean and anchors over a seamount—a submerged volcanic peak sixty feet underwater that is clustered with spectacular sea animals and a wondrous web of marine life. It is there that an astonishing event takes place, when on one of her dives Paloma is shadowed by a manta ray—an animal so large it blocks the sun. She develops an extraordinary relationship with this luminous, gentle creature, but instinctively knows its existence is a secret she must fiercely protect. Benchley’s novel paints a poignant picture of humanity’s precarious relationship with the ocean, which unfolds alongside a heartrending story of familial bonds, often revealing that the ignorance of man is far more dangerous than the sea. Full of beauty, danger, and adventure, The Girl of the Sea of Cortez is triumphant—a novel to fall in love with.
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Q Clearance

Q Clearance

Peter Benchley

Mystery & Thrillers

In this novel the author of Jaws reveals that he knows as much about the White House as he does about the sea: a knowledge which is the 'special ingredient' in an irresistibly hilarious and suspenseful story. Timothy Burnham works – as Peter Benchley once did – as a speechwriter to the President. He has been in the same room as the great man, but only with a lot of other people, and he likes it that way – he is that rarity in Washington, a man with no appetite for power. By a quirk of bureaucracy Burnham is given Q Clearance, which means that every day he receives documents crammed with the highest atomic secrets of which he understands not a word, and which he has to shred every night. Big joke, thinks Burham – but he does not laugh when for unfathomable reasons he suddenly becomes the President's blue-eyed boy. That, he knows, is more than he can cope with – except that, exhilaratingly, the terrifying old man seems to bring out in Burnham more than Burnham knew was there. While this nerve-racking relationship is developing, Burnham meets a lovely blonde. It does not occur to him that a lovely blonde might show obvious interest in a man with Q Clearance, who enjoys the confidence of his President, for some reason other than their enjoyable compatibility. Add to this situation a White House cleaning lady from Bermuda who is desperate to procure for her son a certificate of graduation from high school; an enigmatic caterer whose past is known to nobody (or at least, to nobody in the United States); and several members of the President's Cabinet – figures who would be larger than life if they were not so devastatingly true to it – and you have a spy novel that is pure pleasure: a wonderful balancing act between fidelity to a mind-boggling reality and a genius for entertainment.
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The Deep

The Deep

Peter Benchley

Mystery & Thrillers

A young couple go to Bermuda on their honeymoon. They dive on the reefs offshore, looking for the wreck of a sunken ship. What they find lures them into a strange and increasingly terrifying encounter with past and present, a struggle for salvage and survival along the floor of the sea, in the deep.
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White Shark

White Shark

Peter Benchley

Mystery & Thrillers

At a small marine institute off the coast of Connecticut, only marine biologist Simon Chase realizes that a sixteen-foot pregnant Great White is feeding in the area. But even Simon doesn't know that a far deadlier creature is about to come out of the deep and threaten everything he cares for. A creature whose malevolence is unthinkable. Whose need to feed is insatiable. And whose relentless hunt for prey is unstoppable. Twenty years after his huge bestseller Jaws, the master of the deep has done it again, letting loose a chilling new predator that only he could create. Drawing on his singular knowledge of the sea, science, and history, Peter Benchley masterfully spins a suspense-filled novel that hits you on a primal level, makes your heart pound, and leaves your blood running cold. White Shark is Peter Benchley at his best. Read it at your own risk.
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Beast

Beast

Peter Benchley

Mystery & Thrillers

"Makes the shark from "Jaws" look like a pet goldfish . . ." USA Weekend Straight from the cutting edge of science and the logs of ancient mariners comes an immense horror -- a creature that rises up from the well of an ocean gone mad with an insatiable hunger and an endless lust to kill. One man leads a harrowing struggle to defeat the beast amid a threatened Bermuda paradise. His name is Whip Darling, a down-and-out sea dog who doesn't know where he'll get his next meal -- or whether it will get him first.
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Creature

Creature

Peter Benchley

Mystery & Thrillers

At a small marine institute off the coast of Connecticut, only marine biologist Simon Chase realizes that a sixteen-foot pregnant Great White is feeding in the area. But even Simon doesn't know that a far deadlier creature is about to come out of the deep and threaten everything he cares for. A creature whose malevolence is unthinkable. Whose need to feed is insatiable. And whose relentless hunt for prey is unstoppable.Nearly twenty-five years after his huge bestseller Jaws, the master of the deep has done it again, letting loose a chilling new predator that only he could create. Drawing on his singular knowledge of the sea, science, and history, Peter Benchley masterfully spins a suspense-filled novel that hits you on a primal level, makes your heart pound, and leaves your blood running cold.
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Shark Trouble

Shark Trouble

Peter Benchley

Mystery & Thrillers

Master storyteller Peter Benchley combines high adventure with practical information in Shark Trouble, a book that is at once a thriller and a valuable guide to being safe in, on, under, and around the sea. The bestselling author of Jaws, The Deep, and other works draws on more than three decades of experience to share information about sharks and other marine animals."Shark attacks on human beings generate a tremendous amount of media coverage," Benchley writes, "partly because they occur so rarely, but mostly, I think, because people are, and always have been, simultaneously intrigued and terrified by sharks. Sharks come from a wing of the dark castle where our nightmares live--deep water beyond our sight and understanding--and so they stimulate our fears and fantasies and imaginations."Benchley describes the many types of sharks (including the ones that pose a genuine threat to man), what is and isn't known about shark behavior, the odds against...
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Shark Life: True Stories About Sharks & the Sea

Shark Life: True Stories About Sharks & the Sea

Peter Benchley

Mystery & Thrillers

SUMMARY: In this riveting true adventure and informative guide to the sea, master storyteller Peter Benchley draws on more than four decades of diving experience to bring us face to face with the array of sharks and other marine animals he and his family have encountered, almost always on purpose--but sometimes by accident.In direct and accessible prose, Peter sets the record straight about the many types of sharks (including the ones that pose a genuine threat to us), the behavior of sharks and other sea creatures we fear, the odds against an attack, and how to improve them even further. He also teaches us how to swim safely in the ocean by reading the tides and currents and respecting all the inhabitants. Here are the lessons Peter has learned, the mistakes he has made, the danger he has faced--and the spectacular sights he has seen in the world's largest environment. The book includes 16 pages of black-and-white photographs. "From the Hardcover edition."
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