"As a frail young scholar, Humphrey Van Weyden knows nothing of physical labor. But when an accident at sea leaves him stranded on a seal-hunting ship controlled by the strong, brutal Wolf Larsen, Humphrey is suddenly forced into the backbreaking life of a sailor. For a time, he seems to be learning the ropes and making progress. But as Larsen becomes more and more violent with his crew, Humphrey realizes that he must escape from the clutches of this...

"First published in 1900, Lord Jim is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Its central message about the consequences of straying from personal responsibility and ethical integrity is as powerful today as it was over one hundred years ago. In a split-second impulse of self-preservation, a young ship's officer abandons his imperiled vessel and its passengers. He survives, but suffers a wretched existence. He must...

Captain MacWhirr cannot fathom anything outside the facts of his own life. His first mate, Mr. Jukes, is the perfect contrast as an imaginative man prone to speaking in figurative language. Though they are opposites, MacWhirr and Jukes respect each other and run a tight ship, until the crew notices the barometer predicting a serve storm. Jukes and the crew suggest alternate paths to MacWhirr, but he is unconvinced. Since MacWhirr has not experienced...

Captain Blood is an adventure novel by Rafael Sabatini. The protagonist is the sharp-witted Dr. Peter Blood, a fictional Irish physician who had had a wide-ranging career as a soldier and sailor (including a commission as a captain under the Dutch admiral De Ruyter) before settling down to practice medicine in the town of Bridgwater in Somerset. The book opens with him attending to his geraniums while the town prepares to fight for the Duke of Monmouth....

The last novel Ernest Hemingway saw published, The Old Man and the Sea has proved itself to be one of the enduring works of American fiction. It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Using the simple, powerful language of a fable, Hemingway takes the timeless themes of courage in the face of defeat and personal triumph won from...

But strange as the journey may be, it's nowhere near as strange as what they will find waiting at its end. One of the lesser known novels by Jules Verne, but certainly a novel that is worth reading, An Antarctic Mystery or The Sphinx of the Ice Fields is a fictional travelogue that describes the narrator's adventures as he travels from Kerguelen Islands, a group of islands in the Indian Ocean, towards the South Pole. The novel is the account of the...

Jacky Faber and her classmates at the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls in Boston are kidnapped while on a school outing and transported in the hold of a slave ship bound for the slave markets of North Africa.

The Waif Of The "Cynthia", synopsis: The plot revolved around a dark-haired boy called Erik in a family of blond Norwegians. He was discovered by them in the sea as a baby tied to a ship's buoy. There is however something wrong with him: he has not all the characteristic physical traits of the Scandinavian peoples. He has all the appearance of a Celtic. Dr. Schwaryencrona takes him under his wing and ends up discovering that Erik was adopted by a...

Shares expert guidelines on how to read and appreciate Herman Melville's classic work, offering insight into its history, characters, and themes while explaining its literary relevance in the modern world.

This novel from the author of Around the World in Eighty Days and Journey to the Center of the Earth captures the terror and tragedy of a shipwreck. This 1875 novel portrays in devastating detail the final voyage of a British sailing ship, the Chancellor, in the form of a diary written by one of its passengers, J. R. Kazallon. Carrying eight travelers and twenty crew members, the Chancellor sets sail from Charleston, South Carolina. Nearly a month...