There is something fascinating about sharks – they are creatures of the deep, seeming alien as they glide gracefully through the water.  Some are harmless and some are quite dangerous. They can clear a beach just by passing through the neighborhood. They can also fuel a reader’s imagination.

I remember reading Jaws by Peter Benchley when I was a teenager. I was visiting my grandparents and they had a copy.  Did it scare me?  Yes!  Did I refuse to go into the water for the rest of vacation?  Yes!  Did it matter that my grandparents lived on a lake and not the ocean?  Not even a little bit!  If you have read Jaws, or have seen the movie and can hear that soundtrack in your head, then you know what I mean.  Other books that might make you leery of the beach include the Meg series by Steve Alten or The Raft by S.A. Bodeen.

Not all shark stories end badly, however.  In Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn, a young boy falls overboard while on a cruise. Sharks appear in the water, frightening everyone, until the boy is delivered safely back to his mother by one of the sharks, a legendary story that will follow him throughout his life.  In The Shark Club by Ann Kidd Taylor, Maeve is attacked by a blacktip shark. Eighteen years later, she is a well-respected marine biologist studying and swimming with the very animals that once threatened her life.

If nonfiction is more your thing, my favorite book about sharks is The Devil’s Teeth by Susan Casey.  The Farralon Islands, known as “the devil’s teeth”, are off the shore of San Francisco and they are part of a well-documented great white shark migratory path.  Lured there by the abundance of seals, they linger for several weeks each year.  This allows marine biologists to study them up close.  And I mean up close – they have a boat that they call “the dinner plate” because of how dangerously near to the sharks they can get.  Susan Casey is a journalist and she became fascinated with the story of the Farralon Islands sharks.  She spent a season with the scientists, learning more than she ever wanted to know about great whites, and about the people who study them.

For more reading suggestions to keep you out of the water, check out our Shark Week reading list below!