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Stories of the Sea
Stories of the Sea
Sep 2, 2025 3:34 AM

Author:Diana Secker-Tesdell

Stories of the Sea

Classic adventure stories by Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, Stephen Crane, Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London 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 lonely from the ocean depths; John Updike's lovers retrace the route of Homer's Odyssey on a cruise ship. From Edgar Allan Poe's dramatic 'A Descent into the Maelstrom' to Ernest Hemingway's chilling 'After the Storm', the stories here are as wide-ranging and entrancing as the sea itself.

Reviews

A powerfully intelligent novel

—— Independent

Ms Whitfield [shows] undoubted powers of imagination and literary talent

—— Daily Mail

It's a brilliantly realised picture of a medieval England that never was, and a Machiavellian meditation on what must be done to seize, wield and maintain power

—— Brandon Robshaw , Independent on Sunday

Compassionate and beautifully written

—— Woman & Home

Intricately plotted and thick with intrigue, Savage Lands gives us an insight into an overlooked era

—— Stephanie Bishop , Times Literary Supplement

Clare Clark writes with the eyes of a historian and the soul of a novelist.

—— Amanda Foreman

This densely textured story forces readers to ask: who are the savages?

—— Elizabeth Buchan , Sunday Times Culture

As Clare Clark's third novel so lushly illustrates, Louisiana has never been the safest place to live... this eye-opening account of Louisiana's early history conjures up a nicely gothic landscape

—— Emma Hagestadt , Independent

'Splendid news...Captain Matthew Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons and ADC to the Duke of Wellington is back in the saddle...A marvellous read, paced like a well-balanced symphony. This is more than a ripping yarn...I look forward enormously to hearing more of Hervey's exploits; he is as fascinating on horseback as Jack Aubrey is on the quarterdeck'

—— The Times

A book of great maturity, beautifully alive to the fragility of happiness and all forms of violence... Everyone should read Saturday

—— Financial Times

The supreme novelist of his generation

—— Sunday Times

Dazzling... Profound and urgent

—— Observer

A brilliant novel.It is McEwan writing on absolute top form

—— Daily Mail

Refreshing and engrossing, dense with revelation. Superb

—— Independent on Sunday

A rich book, sensuous and thoughtful... McEwan has found in Saturday the right form to showcase his dazzling talents

—— The Times

McEwan is word-perfect at handling the awkward comedy of this relationship and, as ever, turning it into something far more disturbing

—— Observer

Two characters so vibrant they step straight off the page

—— Yvonne Cassidy , The Tablet

McEwan's brilliance as a novelist lies in his ability to isolate discrete moments in life and invest them with incredible significance

—— Tim Adams , Observer

McEwan's style is lean and clear...every sentence feels carefully crafted, the words all perfectly in place

—— John Harding , Daily Mail

A tightly focused human drama... McEwan gives the reader access to both characters' thoughts with his usual skill, and the comedy of embarrassment, or of the kind of erotic misunderstanding that Milan Kundera used to specialise in, quickly disappears as the marital bed begins to seem more and more ominous... The bedroom scene itself is carried off brilliantly

—— Christopher Taylor , Sunday Telegraph

A fine book, homing in with devastating precision on a kind of Englishness which McEwan understands better than any other living writer, the Englishness of deceit, evasion, repression and regret. In On Chesil Beach McEwan has combined the intensity of his narrowly focused early work with his more expansive later flowered to devastating effect

—— Justin Cartwright , Independent on Sunday

McEwan is the kind of author who can say more in a sentence than most can say in a chapter...This is a thoughtful book which provokes thought. But more immediately than that, this is a book which, while managing to be very funny, gives us a wonderful and moving portrait of a specific time, and two of its hostages, and of how to make a mess of love

—— Keith Ridgeway , Irish Times

McEwan conveys the near-numinous significance of a single moment with quiet, almost unbearable grace

—— Metro

A heavenly read

—— Marie Claire
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