SHARK BITE: AGAINST THE ODDS

by Gary Paulsen

Like Ian, your protagonist here is a teenager thrust into raw survival against nature with minimal resources and no adult rescue in sight. Paulsen strips away everything except the immediate problem—how do you stay alive?—and that relentless focus mirrors Strasser's pacing, though the isolation is psychological as well as physical.

by Lucas E. Morel

This one's a more recent take (2012) on the survival-at-sea formula, but Bodeen adds a claustrophobic paranoia that Strasser hints at—when you're trapped on something that's slowly failing, how much of the danger is external and how much is in your own head? The confined space becomes a character itself.

by Rodman Philbrick

Here's your curveball: a literary novel about a man isolated in the Pyrenees, written with the kind of meditative prose you won't find in Strasser. But if you loved the *feeling* of being cut off from the world and forced to reckon with yourself, Llamazares explores that psychological dimension with stunning depth—it's survival as existential crisis rather than action sequence.

by Piers Paul Read

This is the non-fiction counterpart to what Strasser does fictionally—a true account of teenagers stranded after a plane crash, forced to make impossible decisions under extreme duress. Read's narrative technique is novelistic; he builds tension and character the way a thriller writer would, so it reads like a page-turner despite being documented fact.

by Theodore Taylor

Taylor's classic pairs survival-at-sea with something Strasser touches on but doesn't fully explore: the relationship between two people forced to depend on each other despite initial friction. The Caribbean setting and maritime disaster echo your book, but the emotional core is about how crisis strips away prejudice and builds unexpected bonds.