Vibe: A cosmic-horror novel about grief and fishing that turns into something much stranger once it reaches the reservoir.

Two widowers, Abe and Dan, bond over fishing trips as a way of coping with the deaths of their wives, eventually venturing to a mysterious stream rumored among locals to be dangerous. An embedded tale about the historic construction of the Ashokan Reservoir unspools alongside their story, both converging on something ancient and cosmic beneath the water.

Origin: United States

Content warnings: Graphic violence, child death, sexual content, emotional abuse, suicide, substance use, mental illness, racism (period-typical).

Vibe: A single-location survival thriller about a teenage diver who gets swallowed whole by a sperm whale.

Diving alone to recover his late father's remains, seventeen-year-old Jay is suddenly swallowed by a sperm whale, with limited air and no way out. Trapped inside the whale's stomach, he relives his complicated relationship with his father while racing to find a way to survive.

Origin: United States

Content warnings: Graphic bodily/visceral imagery, death of a parent, near-death experience, claustrophobia/confinement.

Vibe: A quiet, literary body-horror novel about a woman whose wife came back from a deep-sea expedition changed.

Miri is relieved when her wife Leah finally returns from a submarine expedition that went catastrophically wrong, stranding the crew on the ocean floor for months. But Leah isn't quite the same person who left, and Miri slowly realizes something from the deep came back with her.

Origin: United Kingdom

Content warnings: Graphic body horror, grief, terminal illness, suicide, confinement, loss of a parent, disordered eating themes.

Vibe: A classic maritime ghost story about a cursed berth on an ocean liner that no passenger survives sleeping in.

A seasoned traveler books passage on a transatlantic steamer and is assigned an upper berth in a cabin with an inexplicably damp, cold porthole that won't stay shut. As previous occupants' fates come to light, the story builds toward a confrontation with whatever haunts the cabin at sea.

Origin: United States

Content warnings: Death, drowning (implied), supernatural threat/confrontation, period-typical seafaring peril.

Vibe: A doomed WWI U-boat crew's descent into madness after finding a sunken, ancient temple beneath the sea.

Told as the recovered log of a German U-boat commander, the story follows his crew's unraveling sanity after they sink a ship and begin experiencing inexplicable, escalating horrors at sea. As the crew dwindles, the captain becomes fixated on a strange submerged temple that seems to be calling to him.

Origin: United States

Content warnings: Violence, executions/summary killings, madness/psychological breakdown, wartime brutality.

Vibe: A short, brutal creature-feature about a monstrous eel-like sea beast that boards a ship and picks off the crew one by one.

A young ship's apprentice narrates the aftermath of a giant sea creature climbing aboard his vessel in the night, killing and devouring the crew over several harrowing days. The survivors' increasingly desperate attempts to fight back build to a violent final confrontation with the thing.

Origin: United Kingdom

Content warnings: Graphic violence, body horror, character deaths, sustained dread/threat.