Publisher: Gibbs Smith
Rediscover Jack London’s beloved classic in this unique hardbound edition. White Fang has been called “one of London’s most interesting and ambitious works.” Follow the wolfdog White Fang in a story of violence and hardship, morality and redemption, and finding home during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush. Truly a must-have for London fans.
Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author? The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature. Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something. The ideas and inventions of mankind on many occasions have their roots in the minds of authors. From Interplanetary journeys, time travel, robots and cyborgs to voice control, organ transplants, mobile phones and even the internet are just some that began as mere inky black on paper as thrills and adventures. 1 - The Top 10 - Early Science Fiction - An Introduction 2 - Cool Air by H P Lovecraft 3 - Master Zacharius by Jules Verne 4 - A Thousand Deaths by Jack London 5 - The Park of Kings by Alexander Kuprin 6 - The Artist of the Beautiful by Nathaniel Hawthorne 7 - The Tachypomp by Edward Page Mitchell 8 - What Was It? by Fitz James O'Brien 9 - The Republic of the Southern Cross by Valery Bryusov 10 - The Repairer of Reputations - Part 1 by Robert W Chambers 11 - The Repairer of Reputations - Part 2 by Robert W Chambers 12 - Into the Sun by Robert Duncan MilneShow book
These British Isles, moored across from mainland Europe, are more often seen as a world unto themselves. Restless and creative, they often warred amongst themselves until they began a global push to forge a World Empire of territory, of trade and of language. Here our ambitions are only of the literary kind. These shores have mustered many masters of literature. So this anthology’s boundaries includes only those authors who were born in the British Isles - which as a geographical definition is the UK mainland and the island of Ireland - and wrote in a familiar form of English. Whilst Daniel Defoe is the normal starting point we begin a little earlier with Aphra Behn, an equally colourful character as well as an astonishing playwright and poet. And this is how we begin to differentiate our offering; both in scope, in breadth and in depth. These islands have raised and nurtured female authors of the highest order and rank and more often than not they have been sidelined or ignored in favour of that other gender which usually gets the plaudits and the royalties. Way back when it was almost immoral that a woman should write. A few pages of verse might be tolerated but anything else brought ridicule and shame. That seems unfathomable now but centuries ago women really were chattel, with marriage being, as the Victorian author Charlotte Smith boldly stated ‘legal prostitution’. Some of course did find a way through - Jane Austen, the Brontes and Virginia Woolf but for many others only by changing their names to that of men was it possible to get their book to publication and into a readers hands. Here we include George Eliot and other examples. We add further depth with many stories by authors who were famed and fawned over in their day. Some wrote only a hidden gem or two before succumbing to poverty and death. There was no second career as a game show guest, reality TV contestant or youtuber. They remain almost forgotten outposts of talent who never prospered despite devoted hours of pen and brain. Keeping to a chronological order helps us to highlight how authors through the ages played around with characters and narrative to achieve distinctive results across many scenarios, many styles and many genres. The short story became a sort of literary laboratory, an early disruptor, of how to present and how to appeal to a growing audience as a reflection of social and societal changes. Was this bound to happen or did a growing population that could read begin to influence rather than just accept? Moving through the centuries we gather a groundswell of authors as we hit the Victorian Age - an age of physical mass communication albeit only on an actual printed page. An audience was offered a multitude of forms: novels (both whole and in serialised form) essays, short stories, poems all in weekly, monthly and quarterly form. Many of these periodicals were founded or edited by literary behemoths from Dickens and Thackeray through to Jerome K Jerome and, even some female editors including Ethel Colburn Mayne, Alice Meynell and Ella D’Arcy. Now authors began to offer a wider, more diverse choice from social activism and justice – and injustice to cutting stories of manners and principles. From many forms of comedy to mental meltdowns, from science fiction to unrequited heartache. If you can imagine it an author probably wrote it. At the end of the 19th Century bestseller lists and then prizes, such as the Nobel and Pulitzer, helped focus an audience’s attention to a books literary merit and sales worth. Previously coffeehouses, Imperial trade, unscrupulous overseas printers ignoring copyright restrictions, publishers with their book lists as an appendix and the gossip and interchange of polite society had been the main avenues to secure sales and profits.Show book
Grigori Aleksandrovich Pechorin is an enigma: arrogant, cocky, melancholic, brave, cynic, romantic, loner, socialite, soldier, free soul, and yet, victim of the world, he eludes definition and remains a mystery to those who know him. Just who is he? And what does he hope to achieve? Evolving from first person to third person, and then into a diary, A Hero of Our Time takes on a variety of forms to interrogate Pechorin’s cryptic character and his unusual philosophy, providing breathtaking descriptions of the Caucasus along the way. The novel has been hailed as an influence on such writers as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov, and is a striking take on Lord Byron’s ‘superfluous man’; it harks back to the teaching of Machiavelli, while anticipating the future work of Nietzsche.Show book
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), who wrote as H. P. Lovecraft, was an American writer who achieved posthumous fame through his brilliant and highly influential works of horror fiction. 'The White Ship' is an eerie tale told by a lighthouse keeper of an uncanny voyage to the ends of the earth....Show book
Robert Ervin Howard (1906-1936) was an American author famous for his weird tales and horror stories.Sea Curse is the tale which starts with a village tragedy. A local girl who lives with her elderly aunt has been seduced and deflowered by a swaggering, drunk sailor.In despair she drowns herself in the ocean. The sailor mocks her aunt over the girl's washed-up body on the beach. The old aunt retaliates by putting an awful, terrible curse upon the sailor and his mate...and from that moment, the wheels of awful destiny are put into motion.Show book
In this classic by the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps, a retiring hero’s past draws him into an action-packed adventure capped by a deadly standoff. A long-forgotten promise made by Richard Hannay finds him honor-bound to resolve a violent vendetta endangering the lives of a young father and his daughter from unscrupulous and desperate men. Hannay sets out on a high-octane chase from the rural tranquility of his English manor to the Scottish Borders, and ultimately to Scandinavia. On the remote Island of Sheep, a final confrontation begins, and everything will be decided, once and for all . . . This, the last of the Hannay adventures—and the last of Buchan’s novels to be published during his lifetime—is a rare gem of high drama interwoven with Buchan’s personal beliefs about the problems of a post-war world.Previously published as The Man from the NorlandsShow book
