Three Englishmen, marooned on a mysterious South Sea island, learn of the islanders' powerful god Oro, who has been sleeping for 250,000 years. They manage to wake him, along with his beautiful daughter, who is the spitting image of the hero's dead wife, while he is a ringer for her lost love. Other residents of an... read more »
Rudyard Kipling has been attacked for championing British imperialism and celebrated for satirizing it. In fact, he did both. Nowhere does he express his own ambivalence more strongly than in Kim, his rousing adventure novel of a young man of many allegiances. Kimball O’Hara grows up an orphan in the walled city... read more »
Quartermain (the main character from the many adventures found in the Alan Quartermain series) was a progressive Victorian big game hunter in Africa who championed the cause of the natives. Although Haggard often portrays Quatermain as being racist (at least in the light of our modern thinking), this short story... read more »
Written in response to Edgar Allan Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, this follows the adventures of the narrator and his journey from the Kerguelen Islands aboard Halbrane. The story is set in 1839, eleven years after the events in Arthur Gordon Pym. The narrator is a wealthy American... read more »
Burning Daylight is a novel by Jack London which was one of the best-selling books of that year and it was London's best-selling book in his lifetime. The novel takes place in the Yukon Territory in 1893. The main character, nicknamed 'Burning Daylight' was the most successful entrepreneur of the Alaskan Gold Rush... read more »
Captain McWhirr is a serious man who runs his steamer, the Nan-Shan, with efficiency and solidity. When a storm appears to be headed in their direction, MacWhirr is not concerned about his ship’s ability to weather it, but, when the storm turns out to be a powerful typhoon which surges in across the Pacific Ocean... read more »
Careening was a very necessary operation for the old pirate. On his superior speed he depended both for overhauling the trader and escaping the man-of-war. But it was impossible to retain his sailing qualities unless he periodically--once a year, at the least--cleared his vessel's bottom from the long, trailing... read more »
One of the best swashbuckling adventures ever written: As for Captain Morgan, he went about his work with the utmost coolness and deliberation imaginable, unbuttoning the waistcoat and the shirt of the man he had murdered with fingers that neither twitched nor shook. There were a gold cross and a bunch of silver... read more »
This remarkable novel by adventure writer H. Rider Haggard can be enjoyed on many levels. As a tale of adventure, it takes the reader through 16th-century England, Spain, and Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest. But on a deeper level, the author's hopes for humanity shine through the darkness of this time to... read more »
This early work on The night born is a fascinating novel of the period and still an interesting read today. Classic Jack London short stories, including The Night-Born - By Jack London - Classic Jack London. Short Stories including: The Night-Born - The Madness of John Harned - When the World was Young - The Benefit... read more »
Alexandre Dumas weaves the compelling story of Siamese twins who are separated physically but never in spirit. They're raised by two different families, but are still able to 'feel' the emotions of the other, even at a distance. On the island of Corsica they become entwined in the long-running feud between the... read more »
The classic action-adventure romance Mistress Wilding offers something for every Rafael Sabatini fan. Set amidst the turmoil of King James' reign, the tangled love triangle at the center of the novel is beset on all sides by conflict, treachery and intrigue. Will the chivalrous protagonist Anthony Wilding be able to... read more »
A classic novel blending romance, adventure, and science fiction, The Tremendous Event is sure to appeal to fans of LeBlanc's detective fiction. The tremendous event of the 4th, of June, whose consequences affected the relations of the two great Western nations even more profoundly than did the war, has called... read more »
The incredible honeymoon is a story about a man who feels the nothing ever happens to him, and that adventures are things in story books. That is until he comes in to money and decided to leave behind his conventional life and to go and have adventures. He sets out to tramp about, spending his money how he chooses... read more »
A Floating City, enjoyed a popularity almost equal to that of Round the World in Eighty Days. It was the direct result of the trip which the author actually made to America in 1867, on the largest iron ship ever built. He gives us a faithful picture of the natural and usual incidents of an ocean voyage of those... read more »
Lost Face is a collection of seven short stories by Jack London. It takes its named from the first short story in the book, about a European adventurer in the Yukon who outwits his Indian captors' plans to torture him. This collection of rollicking and thought-provoking tales includes some of London's best-known... read more »
Many of the aristocrats profiled in John Buchan's novel The Half-Hearted are beset with crippling doubts about their own lifestyles and characters. Protagonist Lewis Haystoun is disgusted with his own inability to take a decisive stand on any issue of significance, and sets about to cure himself by undertaking a... read more »
Fifteen-year-old Ralph, mischievous young Peterkin and clever, brave Jack are shipwrecked on a coral reef with only a telescope and a broken pocketknife between them. At first the island seems a paradise, with its plentiful foods and wealth of natural wonders. But then a party of cannibals arrives, and after that a... read more »
In the years following the success of his novel Dracula, Bram Stoker took on an even more ambitious creative feat: combining mystery, romance, adventure, Gothic atmosphere, and supernatural elements in one gripping tale. The end result of this process of experimentation was The Mystery of the Sea. If you're a fan of... read more »
Allan and the Holy Flower is a 1915 novel by H. Rider Haggard featuring Allan Quatermain. It first appeared serialised in The Windsor Magazine. Brother John, who has been wandering in Africa for years, confides to Allan a huge and rare orchid, the largest ever found. Allan arrives to England with the flower and... read more »
The final volume of Wallace's, The Prince of India. The protagonist of this novel is "The Wandering Shoemaker" a figure from medieval Christian folklore whose legend began to spread in Europe in the 13th century. The original legend concerns a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was then cursed... read more »
One of Melville’s most popular novels, White-Jacket is both a brisk sea adventure and a powerful social critique, which also contains some of Melville's best black humor (particularly the hilarious Surgeon of the Fleet episode). In 1843, after three years of voyaging in the South Seas, Melville signed up as an... read more »
Set in the Yukon, it tells the story of Frona Welse, a Stanford graduate and physical Valkyrie, who takes to the trail after upsetting her wealthy father's community by her forthright manner and befriending the town's prostitute. She is also torn between love for two suitors: Gregory St Vincent, a local man who... read more »
Long before Michael Crichton's high-tech dinosaurs roamed the bestseller lists, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle envisioned an isolated land of prehistoric life that exists in the 20th century. When Ed Malone, a hotheaded journalist with an insatiable thirst for adventure, is sent to interview the notorious Professor... read more »
The irreverent tale revolves around the exploits of Captain Jacques St. Ives who is captured by the British and thrown in jail. While there, he meets the droll Miss Gilchrist and her lovely niece, Flora, who takes an interest in the prisoner. For Jacques and Flora, it's love at first sight - although Major Chevening... read more »
A stowaway aboard the whaling ship Grampus, Arthur Gordon Pym finds himself bound on an extraordinary voyage to the high southern latitudes. Poes novel recounts the incredible adventures and discoveries of Pym and his companions. There is mutiny, appalling butchery, and the exquisite horror of cannibalism premature... read more »
San Quentin, death-row inmate Darrell Standing, escapes the horror of prison life—and long stretches in a straitjacket—by withdrawing into vivid dreams of past lives, including incarnations as a French nobleman and an Englishman in medieval Korea. Based on the life and imprisonment of Jack London’s friend Ed... read more »
This cheerful little road novel is about Claire Boltwood, who, in the early days of the 20th century, travels by automobile from New York City to the Pacific Northwest, where she falls in love with a nice, down-to-earth young man and gives up her snobbish Estate. read more »
Leonard Outram, a young Englishman who's just lost his fortune along with and his fiancee's hand, makes an oath: he'll win back his home and live happily ever after. Really! Well, sort of. Leonard ends up in Africa, which, at that point in history, was the place to win your fortune back for the gods of fate. Leonard... read more »
Conrad's autobiographical novella of a young man in his first command as a sea captain. A series of crises prove incredibly difficult for his new authority, for the sea is curiously becalmed and the crew is weakened by feverish malaria. When the first mate's fear convinces many that the ship is haunted and cursed by... read more »