Frank Carlson Library

Based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk, who survived alone for almost five years on an uninhabited island off the coast of Chile, The Mysterious Island is considered by many to be Jules Verne's masterpiece. Published in French as L'Île Mystérieuse in 1874, this novel is a sequel to Verne's earlier Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas. After hijacking a balloon from a Confederate camp, a band of five northern prisoners escape the American...

When young Jim Hawkins finds a mysterious map in a dead sailor's sea trunk, it marks the start of a thrilling treasure hunt and a very dangerous adventure. Accompanied by the local doctor and squire, he sets off on the high seas as a cabin-boy, determined to find the buried hoard. But they are not alone in their quest, a band of pirates -- led by the enigmatic, one-legged Long John Silver -- will stop at nothing to take back what they believe is theirs....

"Phileas Fogg's bet that he can span the world in eighty days takes him by train, ship, sled, and elephant across ninettenth-century India, China, and America in one of the wittiest, most enjoyable classics of all time."--P. [4] of cover.

A young seaman joins the crew of the whaling ship Pequod, led by the fanatical Captain Ahab in pursuit of the white whale Moby Dick in this children's version of Melville's Moby Dick.

Dead Man's Walk is a powerful prequel to best-selling author Larry McMurty's Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove. Gus McRae and Woodrow Call are still teenagers when they enlist as Texas Rangers. Soon they are roaming the untamed West, coming of age while they cheat death. Under the command of a former pirate, the young men ride for Santa Fe, where the mission is to forcibly take the city out of Mexican hands.

With Earth embroiled in a vast interplanetary war with the "Bugs," a young recruit in the Federal Reserves relates his experiences training in boot camp and as a junior officer in the Terran Mobile Infantry.

The way of the Ringbearer The Fellowship was scattered. Some were bracing hopelessly for war against the ancient evil of Sauron. Some were contending with the treachery of the wizard Saruman. Only Frodo and Sam were left to take the accursed Ring of Power to be destroyed in Mordor--the dark Kingdom where Sauron was supreme. Their guide was Gollum, deceitful and lust-filled, slave to the corruption of the Ring.

Gulliver has an itch to travel around the world, but whenever he steps on a ship, bad luck seems to find him. He is shipwrecked, abandoned, marooned, and mutinied against, and each time lands in a strange and curious place. First he discovers the kingdom of the six-inch-tall Lilliputians, then the country of the giant Brobdingnagians, then the island of the academic Laputans, which floats in the sky, and finally the noble realm of the horselike Houyhnhnms....

The adventures of the well-to-do hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, who lived happily in his comfortable home until a wandering wizard granted his wish. Bilbo Baggins was a hobbit who wanted to be left alone in quiet comfort. But the wizard Gandalf came along with a band of homeless dwarves. Soon Bilbo was drawn into their quest, facing evil orcs, savage wolves, giant spiders, and worse unknown dangers. Finally, it was Bilbo -- alone and unaided -- who had to...

A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. In the story of an ordinary man who unwittingly gets drawn into a senseless murder on a sun-drenched...