Steve Alten Books

The Steve Alten books include one of my favorite series called MEG. In fact, Meg: Primal Waters was the very first book I have ever read by this thriller author, but it certainly was not my last.

I’ve read all the Steve Alten books in order for his series and a few of the standalone novels (including Undisclosed), and if you haven’t check this author yet, you definitely should.

New Steve Alten Books

MEG Series

1. Origins (MEG #0.5), 2011
2. Meg (MEG #1), 1997
3. The Trench (MEG #2), 1999
4. Primal Waters (MEG #3), 2004
5. Hell’s Aquarium (MEG #4), 2009
6. Nightstalkers (MEG #5), 2016
7. Generations (MEG #6), TBA

Domain Series

1. Domain (Domain #1), 2001
2. Resurrection (Domain #2), 2004
3. Phobos (Domain #3), 2011

Loch Series

1. The Loch (Loch #1), 2005
2. Vostok (Loch #2), 2015

Grim Reaper

1. End of Days (Grim Reaper #1), 2010

Standalone Steve Alpern Books

• Goliath, 2002
• The Shell Game, 2008
• The Omega Project, 2013
• Sharkman, 2014
• Undisclosed, 2017

Steve Alten Biography

Steve Alten (website) was born in 1959 in Philadelphia, where he also grew up. He got his Bachelors degree in Health and Physical Education at Penn State University. After graduating in 1981, he attended the University of Delaware, from where he got his Masters Degree in Sports Medicine. Next, he attended the Temple University for four years and got his Doctorate of Education.

In college, Steve Alten wrote short stories, but he was not thinking at the time of a career in writing.

In high school he was active in sports, playing basketball, which he went on to also play in college.

His initial career goal was to coach Men’s Division I college basketball, however, after graduation, he left that goal behind. He worked as an entrepreneur for five years prior to him moving to Florida with his family.

While working both late at night and during the weekend in order to support his family at a job he didn’t really care for, Steve started working on a book he was thinking about for a long time. Eventually, his debut novel, MEG: A Novel of Deep Terror, was born. It took Steve eight months to finish it. The book would become the first in the MEG thriller series about a massive prehistoric megalodon shark awakened in the modern era. MEg was also was optioned to Disney to become a major feature film.

In fact, because it had the movie deal attached to the book, it created a major bidding war among the major six-book publishing houses.

In order to pay for his book editing fees, the author had to sell his car. Shortly after, in 1996 he lost his day job as a general manager at a wholesale meat plant. Yet, luck was with him as four days later his agent presented him with a two-book deal Bantam Doubleday involving a seven-figure monetary reward.

MEG became an explosive popular thriller, landing as the book of the 1996 Frankfurt book fair, selling to over twenty different countries. It went also on the New York Times bestseller list and it was an extremely popular radio series in Japan.

The first Steve Alten MEG movie will be released in August 2018 and will feature Jason Statham battling an enormous shark. Based on Warner Bros, who released the first movie synopsis, the shark will be even longer than the author anticipated. It will be 75 feet long. Another major actor playing an important role in the film is Li Bingbing.

The next book in the MEG series, The Trench, was published in 1999, and it became a bestseller in its own right as well. The third MEG book, Primal Waters (which is the book I started the series with), was published five years later, in 2004.

For many readers, the Steve Alten Meg series is the most popular and best-known of all. With Meg, Steve Alten became really the author we know and love. The megalodon book series is something unique, and much different (and much bigger) than, say, the Shark movie.

Around the same time, in 2001, Steve Alten started his second series titled Domain, which currently includes three books. The series was also a bestseller with the books being published in several main countries. It was republished in 2011 with the series title The Mayan Prophecy.

His second standalone novel, Goliath, published in 2002, was not only very successful especially in Germany but it is also considered for a TV series.

After finishing the manuscript of The Shell Game, which is based on the 9/11 real story, Steve Alten became ill with Parkinson’s disease, a debilitating illness which sadly can’t be cured; it can only be managed with the right treatment.

However, that didn’t stop the author from writing further books. For example, he also continued his MEG series and wrote several additional standalone novels.

The latest Steve Alten book is titled Undisclosed. It is a standalone sci-fi thriller which touches on the controversial Donald Trump presidency and all the dangers that it entails.

It also shows that there is hope, after all, and while I know that most of the scientific discoveries mentioned in the book are fantasy right now (here’s hoping…), I also believe that our society can get to that enlightened level that humans deserve if the right people are put in place, those who are not greedy to no end, who want everything for themselves, regardless of how bad humanity suffers due to their greedy little hands.

Undisclosed is a very timely book, one that goes beyond sci-fi, into a territory of hopefully opening the eyes to the sad realities of our times. And again, there is much hope in that book…

Honestly, I really wished the situation was like in the book where the discoveries existed but were suppressed rather than not even being a reality at all in our times. Because the first situation calls for hope. The second, means we’re not yet there at all.

Many of the Steve Alten books included little-known historical and archaeological facts, which are mixed with sci-fi elements that make it the popular novels they are. The novels are all very visual in nature and they are perfect candidates for movies. That’s why the Meg book series (starting with the first book, MEG), is becoming a new set of movies. Hopefully, once the popularity of the first movie is set, the producers will give the go-ahead for the rest of the movies to be made as well.