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...

In this novel Mr. Conrad has the Mediterranean, as seen from the French south coast, not for a stage, but for a background, in the depth of which the presence of the English blockading fleet is rather felt than seen throughout the course of events which happen on land in a lonely farm house. The narrative, intimate in character, deals with the crisis in the lives of two women and some men - the Rover being the central figure - and ends at sea in an...

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...

Mark Antony is supposed to be ruling the eastern Roman Empire. However, he is carrying on a torrid affair in Egypt with Cleopatra. The death of his wife, Fulvia, and the threat of a war brings him back to Rome.

Four short stories. Two are sea stories.

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,...

This Edwardian social comedy explores love and prim propriety among an eccentric cast of characters assembled in an Italian pensione and in a corner of Surrey, England. A charming young English woman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza. Attracted to this man, George Emerson -- who is entirely unsuitable and whose father just may be a Socialist -- Lucy is soon at war with...

The narrative describes the life of an Englishman, stolen from a well-to-do family as a child and raised by Gypsies who eventually makes his way to sea. One half of the book concerns Singleton's crossing of Africa and the later half concerns his life as a pirate. Defoe's description of piracy focuses for the most part on matters of economics and logistics, making it an intriguing if not particularly gripping read. Singleton's piracy is more like a...

Portrays the spiritual conflict of a young married woman who, as a result of her new-found faith in God, is torn between the pleasure of her adulterous love for a writer and her obligation to be faithful to her neglectful husband. Setting: London in World War II.