Perhaps the greatest of all adventure stories for boys and girls, Treasure Island began, a brave boy who finds himself among pirates, and of the sinister pirate-cook Long John Silver holds children as entranced today as it did a century ago. It has appeared with illustrations by many leading artists, but none so apt as Peake's--first published in 1949 and out of print until now.

Owen Wister's powerful story of the silent stranger who rides into the uncivilized West and defeats the forces of evil embodies one of the most enduring themes in American mythology.Set in the vast Wyoming territory, The Virginian (1902) captures both the grandeur and the loneliness of the frontier experience, brilliantly evoking the tension between the romantic freedom of the great, untamed landscape and mankind's deep-seated desire for community and social order. Wister ...

The classic novel of a boy rasied by Apes in the African jungle, now the basis for a major motion picture, The Legend of Tarzan, starring Alexander Skarsgård, Margot Robbie, Samuel L. Jackson, and Djimon HounsouOriginally published in 1914, Burroughs’s Tarzan, the ideal image of pure animalistic power at odds with the civilized world, appealed to readers from his very inception and become one of the most enduring icons of popular culture. In this ...

Long celebrated as a symbol of the country’s origins, Plymouth Rock no longer receives much national attention. In fact, historians now generally agree that the Pilgrims' storied landing on the Rock never actually took place — the tradition having emerged more than a century after the arrival of the Mayflower.In Memory’s Nation, however, John Seelye is not interested in the factual truth of the landing. He argues that what truly gives Plymouth Rock its significance...

Raised on a ranch in northern California, Jody is well-schooled in the hard work and demands of a rancher's life. He is used to the way of horses, too; but nothing has prepared him for the special connection he will forge with Gabilan, the hot-tempered pony his father gives him. With Billy Buck, the hired hand, Jody tends and trains his horse, restlessly anticipating the moment he will sit high upon Gabilan's saddle. But when Gabilan falls ill, Jody discovers there are still lessons he mus...

The result of a worldwide effort to assess both the current state of critical understanding of John Steinbeck’s works and the extent of his cultural influenceAs a writer who, beginning in the 1930s, illuminated the lives of ordinary people, Steinbeck came to be the conscience of America. He witnessed and recorded with clarity much of the political and social upheaval of the 20th century: The Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and Vietnam. Yet hi...

The only one of Kipling's novels to be cast in an American setting, Captains Courageous endures as one of literature's most cherished and memorable sea adventures. Harvey Cheyne, spoiled millionaire's son, tumbles overboard from a luxury liner--only to be rescued by the crew of a Gloucester schooner. Thus begins the boy's second voyage into the rugged rites and ways of sailors. Like all Kipling's masterworks, Captains Courageous is an interweaving of art a...

The very first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet was also the first of Conan Doyle's books to be published. His two creations, Holmes, the master of the science of detection and Watson, the great detective's faithful companion, are immediately in fine form. The mystery itself, its solution plucked unerringly by Holmes from the heart of Victorian London, proves to be the inevitable consequence of a tragedy of the American West. The story is harrowing in its alternating hope and desp...

A boy made for mischief, Tom constantly grieves his Aunt Polly with his cunning tricks to get out of school and to lead an idle life of swimming and larking by the banks of the Mississippi. His scrapes vary from whitewashing a fence to witnessing a murder and from running away to be a pirate to hunting by night for buried treasure - but each episode ends with Tom ingeniously on top, as the hero of the village and the envy of all the other boys.

Of all the contenders for the title of The Great American Novel, none has a better claim than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Intended at first as a simple story of a boy's adventures in the Mississippi Valley ”a sequel to Tom Sawyer” the book grew and matured under Twain's hand into a work of immeasurable richness and complexity. More than a century after its publication, the critical debate over the symbolic significance of Huck's and Jim's voyage is still fresh, and it rema...

**The Call of the Wild is Now a Major Motion Picture Starring Harrison Ford!Timeless tales of wolves, dogs, men, and the Wild, The Call of the Wild and White Fang are two of the world’s greatest adventure stories.**The biting cold and the aching silence of the far North become an unforgettable backdrop for Jack London’s vivid, rousing, superbly realistic wilderness classics. The Call of the Wild features a gentle domestic dog driven by th...

David "Davy" Crockett (1786–1836) was born in Tennessee, fought alongside Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812, and later served three terms in the House of Representatives before heading to Texas, where he died defending the Alamo. Col. Crockett’s Exploits and Adventures in Texas, first published after Crockett’s death and disingenuously attributed to him, was written by Richard Penn Smith as a narrative that promoted a sanitized account of the Alamo as a heroic effort by Americans ...