Book picks similar to
From the Deep by Michael Bray


horror
fiction
monsters
creature-feature

Meg


Steve Alten - 1997
    On a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean's deepest canyon, Jonas Taylor found himself face-to-face with the largest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom. The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he's sure he saw but still can't prove exists - Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother of the great white shark. The average prehistoric Meg weighs in at twenty tons and could tear apart a Tyrannosaurus rex in seconds. Taylor spends years theorizing, lecturing, and writing about the possibility that Meg still feeds at the deepest levels of the sea. But it takes an old friend in need to get him to return to the water, and a hotshot female submarine pilot to dare him back into a high-tech miniature sub. Diving deeper than he ever has before, Taylor will face terror like he's never imagined. MEG is about to surface. When she does, nothing and no one is going to be safe, and Jonas must face his greatest fear once again.

Pandora


Joshua Grant - 2016
    Shortly after retrieving a survivor from the ill-fated research vessel La Magia, cruise ship Emerald Rose mysteriously disappears. But evil isn’t content to stay lost forever. The ship reemerges a week later transmitting a single word—Pandora—prompting business tycoon Patrick Carver to send out a team to investigate. He seeks out Aubrey Pittenger for reasons beyond her. She’s not a soldier or a rescuer, just a doctor who spent the last year suffering from the loss of her little girl. Yet when Carver makes her an offer she can’t refuse, she finds herself hurtling toward the crumbling ship and the dark things that flit through its once elegant hallways. Mercenary Julian Eduardo receives a similar offer. Having lived most of his life on one battlefield or another, he now fights to ensure his little brother Ricardo won’t have to follow in his blood soaked footsteps. But all is not as it seems aboard the Emerald Rose, and evil comes in many forms. Carver’s cutthroat team will have to band together if they hope to survive the night and find the essence of hope, the hope they’ve all been searching for, the distant promise at the bottom of Pandora’s Box.

Deep Black Sea


David M. Salkin - 2014
    When they bring aboard the bacteria that enables certain animals to survive in the seven-hundred degree poisonous water of the black smoker, they have no idea that one of the researchers plans on using them as his test subjects.

Ice Cave


Toby J. Nichols - 2020
    A previous expedition found hints that the much warmer subsurface caves could support life and Saxon wants to make that discovery and make a name for himself. The small team descends into a cavern hollowed out of the ice by volcanic activity expecting lichen and arthropods and maybe the remains of extinct life, what they find is a lost world of dinosaurs that have adapted to the permanent twilight, cool temperature, and constrained location. The expedition now face a terrifying fight for survival against savage theropods that have learned to herd and trap, and with their ice cave ecosystem starting to fail, they’re ravenous.

Shadow Of The Abyss


Edward J. McFadden III - 2019
    An ancient creature that must feed its voracious hunger. A massive landslide on Grand Bahama Bank sends a thirty-foot wave traveling at 150MPH toward the east coast of Florida, and the tsunami drags in something horrible from the depths of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge rift valley. Now a monster roams Florida’s east coast and its shallows, searching for prey. Matthew “Splinter” Woods lives in Sailfish Haven. He’s a washed-out Navy SEAL who lives off the grid on his dilapidated boat and has withdrawn from society rather than face his demons. But when his ex-girlfriend, charter boat captain Lenah Brisbee, comes to him for help, Splinter gets drawn into a battle that pits him against the strongest enemy he’s ever faced as he races against time to find the monster before it turns the waters he loves blood red.

The Shuddering


Ania Ahlborn - 2013
    A group of close friends gathers at a secluded cabin in the wintry mountains of Colorado for a final holiday hurrah. Instead, it may be their last stand. First a massive blizzard leaves them marooned. Then the more chilling realization: something is lurking in the woods, watching them, waiting... Now a weekend of family, friends, and fun has turned into a test of love and loyalty in the face of inhuman horrors. The only hope for those huddled inside is to fight—tooth and nail, bullet and blade—for their lives. Otherwise, they'll end up like the monsters' other victims: bright pools of blood on glittering snow, screams lost in the vast mountains.

Saurian


William Schoell - 1988
    Something calls Tom back to the ruins of his boyhood home, to the scene of the devastation that almost destroyed him.

Dead Bait


David DunwoodyAaron Polson - 2009
    Drawing on horror, humor with a helping of dark fantasy and a touch of deviance, these 19 contemporary stories pay homage to the monsters that lurk in the murky waters of our imaginations. If you thought it was safe to go back in the water...Think Again!

Primordial


David Wood - 2017
    When eccentric billionaire, Ellis Holloway, hires renegade marine biologist, Sam Aston, to investigate the legend of a monster in a remote Finnish lake, Aston envisions an easy paycheck and a chance to clear his gambling debts. But he gets much more. There is something terrible living beneath the dark waters of Lake Kaarme and it is hungry. As the death toll mounts, Aston faces superstitious locals, a power-hungry police chief, and a benefactor's descent into madness as he races to find the legendary beast of the lake.

Snow


Ronald Malfi - 2010
    But when a brutal snowstorm cancels his flight from Chicago to Des Moines, Todd and a few other stranded passengers decide to rent a Jeep and make the trip on their own. During the drive, they pick up a man wandering through the snow, who claims to be searching for his lost daughter. He is disoriented and his story seems peculiar. Strangest of all are the mysterious slashes cut into the back of the man’s coat, straight down to the flesh… When they arrive at the nearest town, it appears deserted. Windows dark, car abandoned, fired burning unattended. But Todd and the rest of the travelers soon learn the town is far from deserted, and that they are being watched…

Underneath


Robbie Dorman - 2019
    Underneath the skin. Mary Jensen, a trained medic, needs a new start and she’s getting one at Research Station Tau, in remote Antarctica. Called in as an emergency replacement, Mary soon finds out Tau’s mission: to find a lost elementary particle, deep down in the ice.Dr. Ian Schuller, the station lead, thinks the particle is the key to humanity’s evolution. As they drill into the ice, complications arise and Mary starts to worry about his sanity. As he pushes harder and harder for results, the group begins to fracture.And then the hallucinations start.Something is in the ice, and it is changing them.Now Mary must survive, and face what’s underneath.

Fathomless


Greig Beck - 2016
    Rumors of its existence in our modern oceans have persisted for centuries. Now, in a new adventure, the rumors explode into brutal and terrifying reality in FATHOMLESS, by GREIG BECK. Baranof Island, Gulf of Alaska, 1952. Jim Granger is searching for a place of legend. Known as ‘Bad Water’ by the island’s elders, it’s reputed to be home to many dangerous creatures. Through a seam in a cliff face, Jim finds what he seeks. He also finds, too late, that the water demon he was warned about is horrifyingly real. Today, Cate Granger is following in her grandfather’s footsteps. Along with a team of scientists and crew, she accidentally releases a creature from Earth’s primordial past into today’s oceans. The giant Megalodon shark follows its instinct and a genetic memory of a home that once existed millions of years ago along the Californian coast. Nothing is safe on or below the water as the monster stakes its claim on the world’s oceans. Now Cate and her team must do battle with a creature that has no rival, knows no fear, and regards humans as nothing more than prey. In FATHOMLESS, the greatest predator the world has ever known is coming home. “… combines the terror of Benchley's JAWS with the primordial horror of Alten's MEG in an adventure that is the best of both.” —Matthew Summers, Smash Dragons Book Reviews.

The Ritual


Adam Nevill - 2011
    No longer young men, they have little left in common and tensions rise as they struggle to connect. Frustrated and tired they take a shortcut that turns their hike into a nightmare that could cost them their lives.Lost, hungry and surrounded by forest untouched for millennia, they stumble across an isolated old house. Inside, they find the macabre remains of old rites and pagan sacrifices; ancient artefacts and unidentifiable bones. A place of dark ritual and home to a bestial presence that is still present in the ancient forest, and now they’re the prey.As the four friends struggle toward salvation they discover that death doesn’t come easy among these ancient trees...

Island 731


Jeremy Robinson - 2013
    But his work is interrupted when, surrounded by thirty miles of refuse,  the ship and its high tech systems are plagued by a series of strange malfunctions and the crew is battered by a raging storm.When the storm fades and the sun rises, the beaten crew awakens to find themselves anchored in the protective cove of a tropical island...and no one knows how they got there. Even worse, the ship has been sabotaged, two crewman are dead and a third is missing. Hawkins spots signs of the missing man on shore and leads a small team to bring him back. But they quickly discover evidence of a brutal history left behind by the Island’s former occupants: Unit 731, Japan’s ruthless World War II human experimentation program. Mass graves and military fortifications dot the island, along with a decades old laboratory housing the remains of hideous experiments.As crew members start to disappear, Hawkins realizes that they are not alone. In fact, they were brought to this strange and horrible island. The crew is taken one-by-one and while Hawkins fights to save his friends, he learns the horrible truth: Island 731 was never decommissioned and the person taking his crewmates may not be a person at all—not anymore.

Below


Ryan Lockwood - 2013
    Now, off the coast of California, something is rising from the deep--and multiplying. Voracious, unstoppable, and migrating north, an ungodly life form trailed by a gruesome wake of corpses. With the help of the brilliant and beautiful oceanographer Valerie Martell, Will finds himself in a race against time to stop the slaughter--by a predator capable of devastating the world's oceans. Pray it kills you quickly.