In seafaring literature, no fictional sailor's story can match this true, real-life adventure. Before the Wind is the memoir of early nineteenth-century sea captain Charles Tyng- from his childhood and love affair with the sea to his rise through the ranks to captain and ship owner in the tea and sugar trade. Before the Wind takes listeners on a trip around the world- from visits to Lord Byron in Italy and King Kamehameha in Hawaii to Napoleon's prison...

"Accidentally overhearing a plot to kidnap the niece of a prominent rancher as she arrives from the East, Milt Dale springs into action. He comes out of his splendid isolation to protect Helen and her kid sister, Bo. Leading them away from manmade danger, exposing them to unaccustomed rigor on mountain trails, Dale imparts his rugged philosophy. Beyond the forest, Beasley and Snake Anson are still waiting to carry out their evil plot"--Amazon.

Evelyn Waugh's debut novel, Decline and Fall, is a biting satire that lampoons British society of the 1920s with razor-sharp wit and dark humor. The story follows the misadventures of Paul Pennyfeather, a hapless theology student at Oxford who finds himself expelled from university due to a farcical incident involving the raucous Bollinger Club. Forced to take a teaching position at an obscure Welsh private school, Paul becomes entangled in a series...

Advised by his doctor to become more sociable, Golyadkin, a low-level bureaucrat, arrives uninvited at a birthday party his office manager is having for his daughter. After a number of socially awkward and increasingly uncomfortable moments, Golyadkin is asked to leave and flees the party. While making his way home through a snowstorm, an extraordinary thing happens: Golyadkin meets his double. At first the two are friendly, but it quickly becomes...

A novel of naval life in Napoleonic France. After forty years of piracy on Eastern seas, Citizen Peyrol returns to his native France, a country now ravaged and scarred by revolution and war. Looking for peace in which to end his days, he withdraws to a safe harbor in a remote farmhouse on Escampobar Peninsula, which looks out to the distant Mediterranean, where the lovely Arlette lives with her aunt and the revolutionary Scevola. But the arrival of...

The story picks up with the Clayton family, Tarzan, Jane Porter and their son Korak, returning from their adventures in the previous novel (#8). Along the way they find an orphaned lion cub, which Tarzan takes home and trains.Flora Hawkes, a previous housemaid of the Clayton's had overheard of Tarzan's discovery of the treasure chamber in the lost city of Opar (from The Return of Tarzan and Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar) and had managed to copy his...

From "one of the greatest writers of this century," a fantasy masterpiece about the aftermath of a marriage between a mortal prince and an elfin princess. -Arthur C. Clarke Before the fellowships and wardrobes and dire wolves . . . . . . there was the village of Erl and the Kingdom of Elfland. Considered formative to the development of the fairy tale and high fantasy subgenres, The King of Elfland's Daughter follows Alveric, who...

On April Fool's Day in 1856, a shape-shifting grifter boards a Mississippi riverboat to expose the pretenses, hypocrisies, and self-delusions of his fellow passengers. The con artist assumes numerous identities - a disabled beggar, a charity fundraiser, a successful businessman, an urbane gentleman - to win over his not-entirely-innocent dupes. The central character's shifting identities, as fluid as the river itself, reflect broader aspects of human...

Alvina Houghton is bored by her little town, and feels trapped after her plans to elope with her lover falls through. Though she had previously dreamed of training as a nurse, Alvina is unsure what to do with her life. Alvina comes of age as her father, James, faces the failure of his business. She has a difficult relationship with her father. He is a man who never fully indulged in his passions, but has made eccentric financial decisions. In attempt...

Notes from the Underground is Fyodor Dostoevsky's ninth novel, and considered to be one of the first examples of the existential novel. In this radically inventive work, an alienated former minor administrator in nineteenth-century Russia has broken away from society and withdrawn into an underground identity. With its piercing insight into political, social, and moral issues, this classic is one of the most provocative work of literature ever written. In...