Peter Benchley books in order

When Peter Benchley wrote Jaws in the early 1970s, he meticulously researched all available data about shark behavior. Over the ensuing decades, Benchley was actively engaged with scientists and filmmakers on expeditions around the world as they expanded their knowledge of sharks. 

Also during this time, there was an unprecedented upswing in the number of sharks killed to make shark-fin soup, and Benchley worked with governments and nonprofits to sound the alarm for shark conservation. He encouraged each new generation of Jaws fans to enjoy his riveting tale and to channel their excitement into support and protection of these magnificent, prehistoric apex predators.

This edition of Jaws contains bonus content from Peter Benchley’s archives, including the original typed title page, a brainstorming list of possible titles, a letter from Benchley to producer David Brown with honest feedback on the movie adaptation, and excerpts from Benchley’s book Shark Trouble highlighting his firsthand account of writing Jaws, selling it to Universal Studios, and working with Steven Spielberg.

A young couple go to Bermuda on their honeymoon. The dive on the reefs offshore, looking for the wreck of a sunken ship. What they find lures them into a strange and increasingly terrifying encounter with past and present, a struggle for salvage and survival along the floor of the sea, in the deep.

In the Caribbean, 610 seagoing boats and 2,000 innocent people have simply vanished, apparently lost forever; how could it happen? why does no one know, or care to know? Blair Maynard becomes obsessed with finding out what's going on and pursues the story to a remote archipelago southeast of the Bahamas; there he and his son sail into as sinister a drama as has ever been played out on the sea.

On an island in the Gulf of California, an intrepid young woman named Paloma carries a special legacy from her father—a deep understanding of the sea and a sixth sense about the need to protect it.

Every day, Paloma paddles her tiny boat into the ocean and anchors over a seamount—a submerged volcanic peak sixty feet underwater that is clustered with spectacular sea animals and a wondrous web of marine life.

It is there that an astonishing event takes place, when on one of her dives Paloma is shadowed by a manta ray—an animal so large it blocks the sun. She develops an extraordinary relationship with this luminous, gentle creature, but instinctively knows its existence is a secret she must fiercely protect.

When Timothy Burnham, a minor White House speech writer, unexpectedly becomes the President's chief political confidant and all-round advisor he also receives the attention of the Soviets, who see him as a conduit to Oval Office secrets. 

Jolted out of a humdrum existence when his wife sends him packing, Burnham struggles to cope with his failing marriage, the demands of a garrulous President, and the charms of Eva Pym, an irresistible and unwilling Soviet agent.

When New York editor Scott Preston needs two double vodkas to start the day, his wife and his boss (threatening loss of marriage and job) ship him off to a rehab center. At the Banner Clinic, rummies and junkies--among them a movie star, a professional athlete, and a mobster--face hard truths and rough treatment, with no expletives deleted. 

Successful WASP-stereotype Preston is first alienated, then joins in the camaraderie, becomes infatuated with aristocratic addict Priscilla Godfrey, and is drawn into subplots: the mysterious death of a glamorous film star and recent Banner graduate; the abrupt firing of two counselors; and the abuse of Priscilla by clinic-founder Stone Banner, a charismatic ex-cowboy movie star.

NB: This book is also known as Lush.

Straight from the cutting edge of science and the logs of ancient mariners comes an immense horror -- a creature that rises up from the well of an ocean gone mad with an insatiable hunger and an endless lust to kill. 

One man leads a harrowing struggle to defeat the beast amid a threatened Bermuda paradise. His name is Whip Darling, a down-and-out sea dog who doesn't know where he'll get his next meal -- or whether it will get him first.

At a small marine institute off the coast of Connecticut, only marine biologist Simon Chase realizes that a sixteen-foot pregnant Great White is feeding in the area. But even Simon doesn't know that a far deadlier creature is about to come out of the deep and threaten everything he cares for. A creature whose malevolence is unthinkable. Whose need to feed is insatiable. And whose relentless hunt for prey is unstoppable.

Twenty years after his huge bestseller Jaws, the master of the deep has done it again, letting loose a chilling new predator that only he could create. Drawing on his singular knowledge of the sea, science, and history, Peter Benchley masterfully spins a suspense-filled novel that hits you on a primal level, makes your heart pound, and leaves your blood running cold.

NB: This book is also known as Peter Benchley's Creature.

Time and A Ticket is Peter Benchley's account of all that he saw and did while traveling. He tells of a Bastille Day spent in France, and of life on the Côte d'Azur. He describes hauntingly his reaction to the row upon row of graves at Normandy, and his profound emotional response to the Berlin wall. He even takes time to explode an alluring Scandinavian myth.

Egypt, Ceylon, the two Jerusalems and Japan are among the other places the author visited and recalls. There is humor and honesty in his portrayal of all these lands, and the ingratiating freshness of youth.

This volume, which explores the role that the seas play in our lives, is the companion to a travelling exhibition on ocean conservation at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC, held in 1995. 

Writers, ocean scientists, conservationists, sailors, and fishermen speak about their connections with the oceans. Rachel Carson celebrates the power of the seas; Ann Davison, the first woman to sail alone across the Atlantic, reflects on self-sufficiency; novelist Peter Matthiesson tells of the hard lives of fishermen; John McPhee evokes the dangers of the open sea; naturalist William Beebe descends into the Atlantic in 1934 in a small steel sphere and reports on what he sees; Jacques-Yves Cousteau takes the first dive with the newly invented Aqualung. 

The book emphasizes the importance of conservation, and aims to change the way readers think about the sea.

“Shark attacks on human beings generate a tremendous amount of media coverage,” Benchley writes, “partly because they occur so rarely, but mostly, I think, because people are, and always have been, simultaneously intrigued and terrified by sharks. Sharks come from a wing of the dark castle where our nightmares live—deep water beyond our sight and understanding—and so they stimulate our fears and fantasies and imaginations.”

Benchley describes the many types of sharks (including the ones that pose a genuine threat to man), what is and isn’t known about shark behavior, the odds against an attack and how to reduce them even further—all reinforced with the lessons he has learned, the mistakes he has made, and the personal perils he has encountered while producing television documentaries, bestselling novels, and articles about the sea and its inhabitants. He tells how to swim safely in the ocean, how to read the tides and currents, what behavior to avoid, and how to survive when danger suddenly strikes. He discusses how to tell children about sharks and the sea and how to develop, in young and old alike, a healthy respect for the ocean.

As Benchley says, “The ocean is the only alien and potentially hostile environment on the planet into which we tend to venture without thinking about the animals that live there, how they behave, how they support themselves, and how they perceive us. I know of no one who would set off into the jungles of Malaysia armed only with a bathing suit, a tube of suntan cream, and a book, and yet that’s precisely how we approach the oceans.”

In this title, which combines real-life stories and practical advice, Peter Benchley draws on more than 30 years of experience on and under the water, to help the reader approach the ocean and its inhabitants with the understanding and respect they deserve. 

He describes the many types of sharks, and the few that pose a genuine threat to man, what is and what is not known about shark behavior, the odds against an attack and how to reduce these odds even further, all reinforced by personal experience: the mistakes he has made and the personal perils he has encountered while producing countless articles and television documentaries as well as his novels. 

Benchley tells us how to swim safely, how to read tides and currents and how to survive when danger suddenly strikes. He discusses what to tell children about sharks and how to develop a healthy respect for the sea.

In direct and accessible prose, Peter Benchley sets the record straight about the many types of sharks (including the ones that pose a genuine threat to us), the behavior of sharks and other sea creatures we fear, the odds against an attack, and how to improve them even further. He also teaches us how to swim safely in the ocean by reading the tides and currents and respecting all the inhabitants. 

Here are the lessons Peter has learned, the mistakes he has made, the danger he has faced—and the spectacular sights he has seen in the world’s largest environment. The book includes 16 pages of black-and-white photographs.

Three novels--Jaws, Beast, and The Girl of the Sea of Cortez--by one of the masters of the thriller genre and the author of the Deep:

Jaws

When Peter Benchley wrote Jaws in the early 1970s, he meticulously researched all available data about shark behavior. Over the ensuing decades, Benchley was actively engaged with scientists and filmmakers on expeditions around the world as they expanded their knowledge of sharks.

Also during this time, there was an unprecedented upswing in the number of sharks killed to make shark-fin soup, and Benchley worked with governments and nonprofits to sound the alarm for shark conservation. He encouraged each new generation of Jaws fans to enjoy his riveting tale and to channel their excitement into support and protection of these magnificent, prehistoric apex predators.

Beast

Straight from the cutting edge of science and the logs of ancient mariners comes an immense horror -- a creature that rises up from the well of an ocean gone mad with an insatiable hunger and an endless lust to kill.

One man leads a harrowing struggle to defeat the beast amid a threatened Bermuda paradise. His name is Whip Darling, a down-and-out sea dog who doesn't know where he'll get his next meal -- or whether it will get him first.

The Girl of the Sea of Cortez

On an island in the Gulf of California, an intrepid young woman named Paloma carries a special legacy from her father—a deep understanding of the sea and a sixth sense about the need to protect it.

Every day, Paloma paddles her tiny boat into the ocean and anchors over a seamount—a submerged volcanic peak sixty feet underwater that is clustered with spectacular sea animals and a wondrous web of marine life.

It is there that an astonishing event takes place, when on one of her dives Paloma is shadowed by a manta ray—an animal so large it blocks the sun. She develops an extraordinary relationship with this luminous, gentle creature, but instinctively knows its existence is a secret she must fiercely protect.