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The tense story of survival in Whalefall by Daniel Kraus brings new fears to the big screen with the movie adaptation out now. Whether the claustrophobia, man vs nature, mysteries of the ocean, family drama, or race against time are the elements that pulled you in for this one, there are plenty more thrilling survival stories to explore. Get your fill of suspense this spooky season with tales of adventure, horror, sea stories, and wilderness thrillers that will keep you on edge. Be prepared for fans of Whalefall searching for their next adventure with these fast-paced survival reads.
Books You Should Know About
Her Last Breath by Taylor Adams
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Taking the fight for survival in small spaces from sea to land, this story heightens the suspense with added mystery.
From the publisher: From the bestselling author of No Exit and The Last Word comes a heart-pounding thriller that plunges readers into the suffocating darkness of a cave—and the even darker secrets that lie within.
When Tess reluctantly joins her adventurous best friend Allie on a caving expedition, she expects to confront her claustrophobia—not a stranger who traps her in a fight for her life. A man who claims to be a fellow caver harasses them at the cave’s entrance. Confident, take-no-shit Allie insults the guy—and he retaliates. Soon, Tess is trapped inside a narrow crawl space hundreds of feet underground, fighting to stay alive.
Hours later, Tess emerges alive—but the nightmare is far from over.
As Tess recounts her harrowing story of survival, the detective interviewing her shares new and shocking secrets about Allie’s true past. Together, they begin to suspect the brutal attack wasn’t so random after all. In the hospital, as Tess pieces together the events with a detective, she learns shocking truths about Allie’s past that reframe everything. Was the attack truly random? Who was Allie beneath her dazzling interior? And most chilling of all—has Tess really escaped the danger, or is it still closing in?
The Unveiling by Quan Berry
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Further exploring grief and trauma, this book with the dynamics of a group of people working to survive inhospitable conditions amps up the psychological tension.
From the publisher: From the award-winning author of We Ride Upon Sticks and When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East, a genre-bending novel of literary horror set in Antarctica that explores abandonment, guilt, and survival in the shadow of America’s racial legacy
Striker isn’t entirely sure she should be on this luxury Antarctic cruise. A Black film scout, her mission is to photograph potential locations for a big-budget movie about Ernest Shackleton’s doomed expedition. Along the way, she finds private if cautious amusement in the behavior of both the native wildlife and the group of wealthy, mostly white tourists who have chosen to spend Christmas on the Weddell Sea.
But when a kayaking excursion goes horribly wrong, Striker and a group of survivors become stranded on a remote island along the Antarctic Peninsula, a desolate setting complete with boiling geothermal vents and vicious birds. Soon the hostile environment will show each survivor their true face, and as the polar ice thaws in the unseasonable warmth, the group’s secrets, prejudices, and inner demons will also emerge, including revelations from Striker’s past that could irrevocably shatter her world.
With her signature lyricism and humor, Quan Barry offers neither comfort nor closure as she questions the limits of the human bonds that connect us to one another, affirming there are no such things as haunted places, only haunted people. Gripping, lucid, and imaginative, The Unveiling is an astonishing ghost story about the masks we wear and the truths we hide even from ourselves.
The Night Hunter by Natalie Moss
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Following the death of a parent, sisters try to do right by them and wind up fighting to survive both animals and humans on a safari when things go awry.
From the publisher: In a remote corner of the South African bush, two sisters reunite to bury a family secret once and for all, but when they’re stranded among the wild animals, they find a predator far more dangerous waiting for them in the shadows. . . .
When their conservationist mother passes, Danielle and her estranged sister Grace must return to their isolated family house nestled within a wild-game reserve. While Grace, their mother’s favorite, clings to nostalgia, only Danielle carries the knowledge of her final request: “Find the storehouse . . . Burn everything inside.”
To ease the pain of their homecoming—and the tension between them—each sister invites two friends on the two-day journey into the bush. What starts as a safari adventure, turns into a nightmare when one of them is murdered the first morning at the campsite. In the chaos that follows, they crash their vehicle, stranding them, with no way to call for help.
Now, with dwindling supplies and only one rifle, Danielle must lead them on foot across miles of merciless savannah. They have days of walking ahead…if they survive that long. As the group navigates land where every rustle could mean death, a truth emerges: someone is sabotaging their escape.
Breathtaking and tense, The Night Hunter maps the treacherous terrain of family duty and loyalty as the two sisters confront what they’ve spent years trying to forget.
The Ocean Above Me by Kevin Sites
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With limited air, time, and resources, a struggle from the depths of the ocean to the surface offers a tale to escape a sinking ship, with this one highlighting the other people on board, rather than fellow sea creatures.
From the publisher: Trapped undersea in a capsized shrimping trawler, a damaged former war correspondent is forced to confront a deadly secret from his past as he struggles to survive in this gripping novel of trauma, loss, love, and redemption from award-winning journalist and author of The Things They Cannot Say Kevin Sites.
Former war correspondent Lukas Landon is alone, trapped under 150-feet of water in an overturned shrimp trawler at the bottom of the ocean. The only thing keeping him alive is an air bubble in the ship’s bow. But the water level is rising, and time is running out. Landon doesn’t know if he will survive . . . or if he even deserves to.
After years of covering bloody battles in Afghanistan and Iraq, Landon’s once promising life took a steep nosedive. But he may have found a path to redemption: a series of in-depth stories on the Philomena, the rarest of South Carolina shrimp boats skippered by decorated former army sergeant Clarita Esteban.
A Black woman struggling to survive in a white man’s world, Clarita has assembled a crew of misfits as deeply wounded as herself; a Cuban first mate who came to America during the Mariel boatlift and his troubled younger cousin; a quiet Haitian cook with a secret black book; a deckhand, the only member of the ship’s former crew willing to work for a Black female skipper; and Clarita’s daughter, who lost a college basketball scholarship to an injury.
As Landon slowly earns the disparate crew’s trust, uncovering their pasts—and how each landed aboard this rusty bucket of bolts with its own shaded history—he keeps his own story and the events that unmoored the foundation of his life a secret. But when catastrophe strikes—leaving him twenty-fathoms deep in exquisite isolation—Landon has no one to question but himself. Will he finally come clean? And if he does, will he make it out alive from this 110-ton steel tomb under the sea to finally tell the truth to those who need to hear it?
A thrilling fight for survival and a poignant story of loss and redemption, The Ocean Above Me is a literary masterpiece that explores the effects of trauma, the pain of forgiveness, and the light of love that burns in the darkest depths.
Untamed Coast by Kevin C.Morris
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For a little more adventure, follow along three timelines of people surviving the same Alaskan island, battling the elements and other people.
From the publisher: A late-night mayday call drives a grieving man to embark on an unexpected journey along the wild Alaskan coast, unraveling a decades-old mystery of stolen gold, missing women, and murder in this atmospheric and propulsive debut novel, perfect for fans of William Kent Krueger and Peter Heller.
After the loss of his wife, Marconi Franco is content drifting alone on his boat through the isolated waters of Southeast Alaska with no real destination in mind. But when a mysterious distress signal cuts through the static on his radio one sleepless night, Marco feels an overwhelming pull to help the woman whose plea he heard—a pull he can’t explain or ignore.
His search for the missing woman draws him to Radioville, an abandoned 1930s communication outpost now decaying on an uninhabited island off the coast of Alaska. There, Marco begins uncovering fragments of a story long forgotten: a Depression-era theft, a shattered marriage, and a disturbing pattern of disappearances. As he sifts through the past, his own grief starts to mirror the tragedies that echo across decades, and his search draws the attention of someone determined to keep the truth buried.
Told across three evocative timelines—a radio operator in 1938 collecting more than just telegrams, a young woman in the 1980s fighting to survive her abusive husband, and Marco in the present day searching for a voice in the static—Untamed Coast is a story of fierce determination, missed signals, loneliness and connection, and the unseen ripples that reverberate across generations, standing the test of time and the tides.
From Below by Darcy Coates
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Diving into the depths of a mysterious shipwreck, a film crew find themselves trying to escape something unexpected.
From the publisher: No light. No air. No escape.
Hundreds of feet beneath the ocean’s surface, a graveyard waits…
Years ago, the SS Arcadia vanished without a trace during a routine voyage. Though a strange, garbled emergency message was broadcast, neither the ship nor any of its crew could be found. Sixty years later, its wreck has finally been discovered more than three hundred miles from its intended course…a silent graveyard deep beneath the ocean’s surface, eagerly waiting for the first sign of life.
Cove and her dive team have been granted permission to explore the Arcadia’s rusting hull. Their purpose is straightforward: examine the wreck, film everything, and, if possible, uncover how and why the supposedly unsinkable ship vanished.
But the Arcadia has not yet had its fill of death, and something dark and hungry watches from below. With limited oxygen and the ship slowly closing in around them, Cove and her team will have to fight their way free of the unspeakable horror now desperate to claim them.
The Ice on the Lake by Alex Messenger
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A solo trip for introspection takes a bad turn leading to a struggle to survive, with more focus on righting things with family.
From the publisher: A haunting story of survival and redemption on the frozen expanse of Lake Superior.
The harsh winters of Duluth, Minnesota, don’t bother Hugh McLaren. Decades after the death of his wife and estrangement from his children, the only respite from his troubled thoughts comes from ice fishing alone on the windswept expanse of Lake Superior. Out on the ice, Hugh can drop a line in search of monsters of the deep and be free of his own demons.
But when a routine exam turns into a terminal diagnosis, Hugh enters a new spiral of guilt and regret—about the loss of his wife and his own troubled upbringing—making him consider how he might mend his broken relationships with his children. To push aside his internal turmoil, Hugh goes onto the ice to fish during a severe storm, but as the blizzard rages on, he is forced to reckon with worsening conditions and the even colder storm inside himself.
The Ice on the Lake is a novel of resilience and determination—both to survive the fury of nature and to reconcile with the ghosts of the past.
Wolvers by Taylor Brown
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An adventure unfolds unexpectedly after a unique encounter with a wild animal in this story where people confront nature and instinct.
From the publisher: From the Southern Book Prize winning author of Rednecks: a thrilling novel of pursuit, survival, and redemption between two species in the American Southwest
Broke, dispossessed, and angry at the government after losing his family’s New Mexico ranch, Trace Temple is looking for revenge. He’s living out of his truck when a shadowy militia movement hires him to take down the legendary she-wolf of the Dark Canyon pack, One-Eleven. But One-Eleven is no ordinary wolf. Cunning, fiercely protective of her young, and seasoned in the ways of men, she leads her pack deep into the forbidding desert peaks and canyons, always one step ahead of pursuit.
After a harrowing brush with death in the backcountry, Trace has a change of heart—only to be replaced by a professional hunter and assassin named Murdoch, who ruthlessly pursues his animal quarry while stalking Trace himself.
To survive, Trace must join forces with a pair of unlikely allies: a survivalist animal protector who deploys feral senses and deep wilderness skills to protect the wolves, and Imogen Cruz, a local rancher, childhood friend, and unrequited love of Trace’s early years. Together, they must fight to protect not only themselves and the Dark Canyon pack, but ultimately, the Gila Wilderness itself—the world’s first designated wilderness area.
In Wolvers, award-winning author Taylor Brown presents a suspenseful, thrillingly-written tale set at the burning edge of today’s Southwest, where once-extinct wolves have returned, the land is tinder-dry and fragile, and desperate men seek to reclaim what they believe is theirs to rule.
False Bodies by J.R. McConvey
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A bold sea story with horror and sci-fi elements, this tale twists adventure, survival, and mysteries of the deep.
From the publisher: A genre-bending noir, and perhaps the squiddiest novel ever written, False Bodies creates a horror/thriller blend of the renowned Newfoundland culture seen in shows like Come From Away with the heart-pounding tension and creeping fear of Alien.
False Bodies follows monster hunter Eddie “The Yeti” Gesner to Newfoundland, to investigate a mass death on an offshore oil rig—which some say is the work of a kraken. A mysterious incident in Eddie’s life has made him obsessed with chasing unfathomable things, but when an antique diary plunges him into a watery world of squid cults, tentacled beasts and corporate greed, Eddie finds even his own fractured reality pushed to the brink, as he’s forced to confront an undersea power beyond human imagining.
If you’re interested in exploring more titles that center around survival, you can explore our full Readers’ Advisory Lists.
For more great lists, check out the Recommended Lists section of the Resource Center, home of all the great lists maintained by OverDrive’s staff librarians. Lists include bestsellers, favorite genres, kids and teens, LOTE content, seasonal favorites, and more!
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About the author: Tori has worked in academic libraries, archives, and public libraries in various roles. Now at OverDrive, she helps public libraries build and highlight their digital collections. Outside of work and reading, she enjoys hiking, gardening, wildlife photography, and planning trips to national parks. Tori is always happy to discuss all the books with strong nature settings!