In 1898 John Millington Synge made his first of many trips to the Aran Islands in an attempt to record and archive the tales, poems and songs of the three western islands off of the Galway coast. The memoir he kept of his time their makes up this book, awash with stories of the wonderful characters he met along the way and all their anecdotes. He manages to capture a the way of life that is long since gone and it is lucky for us that he took the time...

Based on Melville's real-life experiences after having jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands, his first novel was extremely popular, provoking public skepticism until the events within were corroborated by a fellow castaway. Typee is properly considered a work of fiction, as the three week stay on which the author based his story is here extended to four months, and the book is supplemented with imaginative reconstruction and adaptation of material...

In The Island of Dr. Moreau a shipwrecked gentleman named Edward Prendick, stranded on a Pacific island lorded over by the notorious Dr. Moreau, confronts dark secrets, strange creatures, and a reason to run for his life. While this riveting tale was intended to be a commentary on evolution, divine creation, and the tension between human nature and culture, modern readers familiar with genetic engineering will marvel at Wells's prediction of the...

Thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree has lived her entire life at Swamplandia!, her family’s island home and gator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades. But when illness fells Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, the family is plunged into chaos.

Trapped on a remote Washington island with their dreams out of reach, two sisters clash when a mysterious bear arrives swimming in the channel, forcing them to confront their conflicting desires for escape and connection.

On an island where one child is delivered each year while the eldest is taken away, nine children live under the leadership of new elder Jinny, who trains the latest newcomer and wonders what will happen when her own departure occurs.

Sisters Nina and Averil Wentworth deal with life and love--and their tenuous relationship with each other--on Blackberry Island.

"Piper's older brother leaves Peek-A-Book Island and Piper refuses to take off his old earmuffs, no matter what! Things are going from bad to worse... until she discovers The Fairy Tree"--

"Monsters are still lurking on the island of Barrow's Bay. Dare Coates is sure of it. No drifter or ruffian could have killed her father, the Captain of the Guard, while he was on patrol. But everyone insists that monsters have been gone for years now. Dare's mother. Her classmates. Even the governor, who swiftly marries her mother just months after her father's death. Dare's suspicions grow even stronger when the governor suddenly ships her off to...

Three children spend the summer with their mother on a secluded island where they discover a three-headed dragon living in a cave and learn what it means to be a Dragon Friend.