Publisher: Charles River Editors
Waxkeep Publishing Collections provide history's greatest authors' collected works in a convenient collection complete with a linked table of contents. Waxkeep Publishing's goal is to provide the most complete, and most easy to read collections in the marketplace.
Based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk, who survived alone for almost five years on an uninhabited island off the coast of Chile, The Mysterious Island is considered by many to be Jules Verne’s masterpiece. Here is the enthralling tale of five men and a dog who land in a balloon on a faraway, fantastic island of bewildering goings-on and their struggle to survive as they uncover the island’s secret.Show book
"The Star" is an 1897 apocalyptic short story by H.G. Wells.In January (about 1900, presumably), the people of Earth awaken to the notion that a strange luminous object has erupted, into the Solar System, after disturbing the normal orbit of the planet Neptune. Indeed, such object is a luminous celestial body, whose luminosity is distinguishable on the sky about the constellation of Leo.Although initially it is a matter of concern only for astronomers, eventually the world media announces that it is a whole star, heading in a collision course toward the center of our star system. In its way, the star had enwrapped Neptune indeed, bringing it inside. Although many people are concerned by this, the issue amounts to little more than a temporary fad...Show book
Sherwood Anderson's wonderful story of a young boy, brought up on an unsuccessful chicken farm, whose impoverished parents try their luck at running a restaurant. The father, not a natural showman by nature, attempts one night to entertain the sole diner with tricks which use eggs. The result is disastrous.Show book
Published in 1866, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War is a collection of poems about the Civil War by Herman Melville. Many of the poems are inspired by second- and third-hand accounts from print news sources (especially the Rebellion Record) and from family and friends. A handful of trips Melville took before, during, and after the war provide additional angles of vision into the battles, the personalities, and the moods of war. In an opening note, Melville describes his project not so much as a systematic chronicle (though many of the individual poems refer to specific events) but as a kind of memory piece of national experience. The "aspects" to which he refers in the title are as diverse as "the moods of involuntary meditation-moods variable, and at times widely at variance." Much of the verse is stylistically conventional (more so than modern readers perhaps expect from the author of Moby-Dick), but the shifting subjectivities and unresolved traumas that unfold in the collection merit repeated contemplation. Melville's Battle-Pieces do not offer a neatly versified narrative of the Civil War but rather kaleidescopic glimpses of shifting emotions and ambivalent reflections of post-war AmericaShow book
One of the most requested motivational lectures of all time. "I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich ... The men who get rich may be the most honest men you find in the community. Let me say here clearly ... ninety-eight out of one hundred of the rich men of America are honest. That is why they are rich. That is why they are trusted with money. That is why they carry on great enterprises and find plenty of people to work with them. It is because they are honest men. ." The central idea of the work is that one need not look elsewhere for opportunity, achievement, or fortune—the resources to achieve all good things are present in one's own community; look in your own backyard for those acres of diamonds. This theme is developed by an introductory anecdote, credited by Conwell to an Arab guide, about a man who wanted to find diamonds so badly that he sold his property and went off in futile search for them. The new owner of his home discovered that a rich diamond mine was located right there on the property. Conwell elaborates on the theme through examples of success, genius, service, or other virtues involving ordinary Americans contemporary to his audience: "dig in your own backyard!". -Show book
Phileas Fogg, a gentleman of stringent and inflexible habits, proposes that he can circumvent the globe in 80 days. He wagers half of his fortune to this effect. But when a high profile bank robbery occurs, the dogged Detective Fix is convinced that Mr. Fogg is an audacious bank robber, and that his entire “gentleman’s wager” is a charade. Thus begins a wild battle of cat and mouse which takes the clever combatants around the world.Show book
