Jack London's 1904 novel "The Sea Wolf" is the story of Humphrey van Weyden, an effete gentleman, who finds himself shipwrecked when the San Francisco ferry his is aboard collides with another ship in the fog. Adrift in the bay, Humphrey is rescued by Wolf Larsen, the brutish captain of a seal-hunting schooner, the "Ghost". However, his relief in being saved is short-lived, for he is soon put to work, essentially enslaved as a cabin boy forced to...

Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

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....

In 1845, young researcher Eliot Saxby is paid to go on an Arctic expedition to find the remains of the by-now-extinct great auk, a large, flightless bird of mythical status, and is trapped on a hunting ship where the crew and passengers are not what they seem.

"Nostromo, A Tale of the Seaboard" is set in the South American country of Costaguana, and more specifically in that country's Occidental Province and its port city of Sulaco. Though Costaguana is a fictional nation, its geography as described in the book resembles real-life Colombia. Costaguana has a long history of tyranny, revolution and warfare, but has recently experienced a period of stability under the dictator Ribiera. Charles Gould is a native...

He was a British merchant, manufacturer, insurer, and spy, but Daniel Defoe eventually found his true calling as a writer-and his masterful fiction has endeared him to readers all over the world. A prolific author who published over 500 novels, travel guides, pamphlets, and journals, he was best known for his 1719 adventure novel Robinson Crusoe. Soon after the enormous success of Robinson Crusoe, Defoe wrote this compelling account of high-seas drama...

Almayer, an immigrant living on the Malayan continent with his native wife and his daughter, Nina, dreams of riches, and so pursues hidden gold mines and begins construction on a mansion to impress the British forces that he believes are coming to conquer the region. However, none of Almayer's schemes come through for him, and his recklessness results in a desperate situation for him and his family. Almayer's Folly was Joseph Conrad's first novel....

First published in 1914, "The Mutiny of the Elsinore" is a novel by American writer Jack London that centers around the death of a ship's captain and the ensuing conflict that arises as a result of a split in leadership and loyalty. The story is partially based on London's own experiences voyaging around Cape Horn on a ship called "The Dirigo" in 1912. John Griffith London (1876 – 1916), commonly known as Jack London, was an American journalist,...

One of the first books published after the tragic loss of the Titanic, The Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters is a detailed account of the events the night of April 14-15, 1912, and how the tragic loss of life could have been averted. The largest ocean liner of her time, Titanic was on her maiden voyage when she struck an iceberg and sank in the frigid North Atlantic, taking more than 1,500 passengers and crew with her. The Sinking of...