Cate Granger Books in Order

The Cate Granger novels take Greig Becks love of giant monsters and push them into the deep ocean. Cate is a marine biologist with family ties to old Alaskan legends, and her research brings her face to face with creatures long thought extinct.

In Fathomless she follows in her grandfathers footsteps to a notorious stretch of water off the Alaskan coast that local elders call Bad Water. There she and her team disturb a lingering relic from the age of megafauna, a colossal shark with instincts that send it south toward the busy Californian shoreline.

As the creature rises through the food chain, ships, surfers and coastal towns find themselves under assault. Cate is not a hardened action hero, but she is stubborn and feels responsible for what has been unleashed. Much of the tension comes from watching scientists, divers and coast guard crews try to match an animal that views boats as toys and humans as prey.

The sequel, Abyss, shows that killing one monster does not end the story. A petroleum research vessel using powerful sound blasts on the sea floor wakes something that has been hidden in the deepest trenches for an unimaginable span of time. Cate, diver Jack Monroe and a wider team are drawn into an expedition down into the abyssal zone, where light never reaches and predators have evolved into nightmarish shapes.

Leviathan completes the arc by taking the action to the waters beneath Antarctica. A wealthy Russian backer is convinced that megalodons or similar giants are now roaming under the ice, and recent attacks seem to prove her right. She insists that Cate and Jack join a mission to find the source of the threat and end it, only for the team to stumble onto something even more alien in those freezing depths.

The series blends scientific detail about deep sea environments with set pieces straight out of creature features. Expect claustrophobic dives in experimental submersibles, tense deck scenes in rough seas and a recurring theme that the ocean is both cradle and graveyard to things humanity barely understands.