A collection of six stories by Herman Melville includes what has long been regarded as three of Melville's most important achievements in the genre of short fiction, "Bartleby, the Scrivener", "Benito Cereno", and "The Encantadas", his sketches of the Galápagos Islands. The Piazza: The protagonist idealizes a radiant spot on the mountain he looks upon from his piazza. This spot is a house and one day he goes to the cottage, only to find the unhappy...

Blood and Revenge-- Titus Andronicus is by far Shakespeare's most violent play. Set in the later days of the Roman empire it follows a fictional succession to the throne. The play follows Titus, a great Roman general, who is thrown into one bad situation after another. Much blood flows and a cycle of revenge ensues and tragedy abounds. Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead. Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things As willingly as one would...

"How to Tell a Story and Other Essays" is a collection of essays on various subjects by America's most famous satirist, Mark Twain. Contained in this volume you will find the following essays: How to Tell a Story, In Defense of Harriet Shelley, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses, Travelling With a Reformer, Private History of the 'Jumping Frog' Story, Mental Telegraphy Again, What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us, A Little Note to M. Paul Bourget, The Invalid's...

Shadows on the Rock Willa Cather - Set in 17th century Canada. A year in the life of a widow and his young daughter and the trappers, missionaries, craftsmen, friends and others who come to their house and shop, it highlights the men and women who struggled to adapt to the "new world" and make a new life for themselves even as they clung to the one they had left behind

"Shares the author's argument for equality and an end to racial discrimination that explains why the civil rights struggle is vital to the United States."--

During the Carlist war of the early 1870s, a young sailor joins the champions of Don Carlos de Bourbon, pretender to the throne of Spain. The Carlists use the eager youth's intense attraction to the sea to persuade him to run perilous enterprises for their cause, ventures he later learns have been financed by the beautiful mistress and heiress of a rich man's fortune. When he falls in love with her, he finds himself moved absolutely by this discovery,...

An exciting tale of nautical adventure on the waters of colonial New York Harbor. Chiefly set on the waters and islands of New York Harbor in the early years of the 1700s, James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Water-Witch (1830) paints a vivid picture of life in the little colonial port. It was familiar territory for Cooper, who a century later had served as a junior officer on board an eighteen-gun sloop-of-war stationed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. That...

Step into a world of witty banter and romantic misunderstandings in P. G. Wodehouse's classic comedy, "A Damsel in Distress." From the bustling streets of London to the charming manor of Belpher Castle, this delightful tale whisks you away on a rollercoaster of mishaps and merrymaking. Meet George Bevan, a lovelorn American composer, and Lady Maud Marsh, a spirited damsel yearning for adventure. When fate throws them together in a taxi cab, a...

Memoirs of Josef Teodor Nalecz Korzeniowski's experiences in the merchant marine.

Likely written around 1607 or 1608 and attributed at least in part to Shakespeare, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre" is an adventure-filled play that follows the extended sailing journeys of a young prince. Pericles, a young prince from Phoenicia, is forced to flee Antioch when he correctly guesses a riddle that reveals the incestuous activity of King Antiochus. Unable to stay at home in Tyre because of Antiochus' vengeance, he sails away and ends up shipwrecked...