Looking for a book that takes place near the ocean/on a seacoast

[Grim]

Many Waters - Madeleine L'Engle

[strawberrybird]

If you want something more esoteric, try Cold Skin by Albert Sanchez Pinol. "This first novel, by an anthropologist, is a dizzying, surreal account by an unnamed narrator who arrives on a desolate Antarctic island for a yearlong post as a British weather official. Upon his arrival, he finds the only other human inhabitant of the island to be nearly mad, and he soon discovers why: a swarm of reptilian sea-creatures crawls from the ocean each night in an attempt to kill the humans inhabiting their island. Life there becomes a matter purely of survival, but as the year progresses, the narrator, quite predictably, begins to question the very nature of survival. What is its purpose? It is not surprising that this novel becomes a philosophical tract, musing on the true definition of love, passion, intelligence, society, and, ultimately, humanity."

[Erron]

I thought that Snow Falling on Cedars might interest you as well. Some mystery, some historical fiction, decidedly drama and all taking place on a island community in the Pacific Northwest.

"Amazon.com Review
This is the kind of book where you can smell and hear and see the fictional world the writer has created, so palpably does the atmosphere come through. Set on an island in the straits north of Puget Sound, in Washington, where everyone is either a fisherman or a berry farmer, the story is nominally about a murder trial. But since it's set in the 1950s, lingering memories of World War II, internment camps and racism helps fuel suspicion of a Japanese-American fisherman, a lifelong resident of the islands. It's a great story, but the primary pleasure of the book is Guterson's renderings of the people and the place."

[fallenleaf]

I Was Amelia Earhart - Jane Mendelsohn. I read this years ago and sorry to say can't remember much, but I do remember it was dreamy and a little profound, and whenever I think about it I hear ocean waves.

The Maytrees - Annie Dillard. Not so much the sea, but Cape Cod. Novel about a marriage and unraveling in general.

Skeletons on the Zahara - Dean King. Most of it takes place on land but they got to the land after being shipwrecked and that part was pretty compelling, too.

[reader2121]

What about The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever