Burning Daylight

Burning Daylight

Jack London

Literature & Fiction / Adventure / Classics

Burning Daylight is a novel by Jack London, published in 1910, which was one of the best-selling books of that year and it was London\'s best-selling book in his lifetime. The novel takes place in the Yukon Territory in 1893. The main character, nicknamed "Burning Daylight" was the most successful entrepreneur of the Alaskan Gold Rush. The story of the main character was partially based upon the life of Oakland entrepreneur "Borax" Smith. The novel was subsequently filmed as a First National movie starring Milton Sills with Doris Kenyon.
Read online
  • 1 110
Pan's Realm

Pan's Realm

Christopher Pike

Young Adult / Horror / Science Fiction & Fantasy

Are there fairies and gnomes? Leprechauns and elves? Most people, including Adam, would have said no. But one day a whole herd of magical creatures invades Spooksville. At first they play childish pranks, and Adam and his friends are happy to welcome them. But quickly the pranks turn cruel, and Adam, Sally, Watch, and Cindy are soon fighting for their lives. Where did these little people come from? How can Adam and his pals make them go away?
Read online
  • 1 103
Houseboat on the Seine: A Memoir

Houseboat on the Seine: A Memoir

William Wharton

Fiction

The title brings to mind a luxury vessel on the most glamorous river in the world, but readers expecting to learn about the high life in France will be in for a surprise. In this charming memoir, painter and novelist Wharton (Birdy) instead gives us literally the nuts and bolts of building a houseboat, along with generous dollops of humor and local color. As a struggling artist in Paris with his schoolteacher wife and four children, Wharton decided to build his own boat after visiting that of an acquaintance in the mid-1970s. He recounts the family's adventures in making their dream come true. They gave up their Paris flat and moved onto the boat, which docked 12 miles downriver from Paris at Le Port Marly. There they spent the next 25 years adding the finishing touches. The most poignant moment comes at the wedding of oldest child, Kate, aboard ship. The author reminds us that she, her husband and their two children were to perish in 1988 in an Oregon fire, a tragedy he recounted in Ever After. Some readers might have preferred learning more about life aboard the boat than about the details of building it, but this work will satisfy Wharton devotees and Francophiles alike. (Jun.)
Read online
  • 1 100
Kiss an Angel

Kiss an Angel

Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Literature & Fiction / Romance

Wedding Day Pretty, flighty Daisy Devreaux can either go to jail or marry the mystery man her father has chosen for her. Arranged marriages don't happen in the modern world, so how did the irrepressible Daisy find herself in this fix? Alex Markov, as humorless as he is deadly handsome, has no intention of playing the loving bridegroom to a spoiled little feather-head with champagne tastes. He drags Daisy from her uptown life to a broken down traveling circus and sets out to tame her to his ways. But this man without a soul has met his match in a woman who's nothing but heart. Before long, passion will send them flying sky high without a safety net... risking it all in search of a love that will last forever.
Read online
  • 1 099
The Night in Question: Stories

The Night in Question: Stories

Tobias Wolff

Biographies & Memoirs / Nonfiction / Literature & Fiction

One of the sinuous and subtly crafted stories in Tobias Wolff's new collection--his first in eleven years--begins with a man biting a dog. The fact that Wolff is reversing familiar expectations is only half the point. The other half is that Wolff makes the reversal seem inevitable: the dog has attacked his protagonist's young daughter. And everywhere in The Night in Question, we are reminded that truth is deceptive, volatile, and often the last thing we want to know. A young reporter writes an obituary only to be fired when its subject walks into his office, very much alive. A soldier in Vietnam goads his lieutenant into sending him on increasingly dangerous missions. An impecunious mother and son go window-shopping for a domesticity that is forever beyond their grasp. Seamless, ironic, dizzying in their emotional aptness, these fifteen stories deliver small, exquisite shocks that leave us feeling invigorated and intensely alive. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Read online
  • 1 097
The Enchanted Island of Yew

The Enchanted Island of Yew

L. Frank Baum

Children's Books / Fantasy / Fiction

The Enchanted Island of Yew is a children's fantasy novel written by L. Frank Baum. The Island of Yew is set at some undisclosed place in the Earth's global ocean "in the middle of the sea." Like Oz, it is divided into four countries associated with the four cardinal directions, plus a fifth central country that dominates the others. In the east of Yew lies the land of Dawna; in the west, "tinted rose and purple by the setting sun," is Auriel. In the south lies the kingdom of Plenta, "where fruits and flowers abounded;" and in the north is Heg, the most stereotypically feudal and medieval of the four. In the center, like the Emerald City in Oz, lies the fifth kingdom of Spor. But while the Emerald City is a powerfully positive place, the centrally-located Spor has just the opposite influence for Yew: Spor is a bandit land, ruled by the mysterious King Terribus, and populated by "giants with huge clubs, and dwarfs who threw flaming darts, and the stern Gray Men of Spor, who were the most frightful of all." The other peoples of Yew are pleased if the denizens of Spor come to rob them only once a year.
Read online
  • 1 096
Puck of Pooks Hill

Puck of Pook's Hill

Rudyard Kipling

Fiction / Poetry / Children's

Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling is a compilation of fantastic tales, juvenile in character, that bequeath to the reader the vital events which have played the principal part in England's development.When Dan and Una stage a performance of A Midsummer Night\'s Dream in a fairy ring, they are astonished by the appearance of Puck in person. He explains that he is the last of the People of the Hills, who started as gods before descending into this world. Puck leads the two children in a series of extraordinary historical adventures in which they meet, Romans and Crusaders, Saxons and Vikings. Kipling\'s charming songs and verses, including the famous Smuggler\'s Song are placed between each thrilling story. The book is beautifully illustrated by H.R. Millar.
Read online
  • 1 087
Mr Nice

Mr Nice

Howard Marks

Business

The incredible story of an unconventional life During the mid 1980s Howard Marks had forty three aliases, eighty nine phone lines and owned twenty five companies throughout the world. At the height of his career he was smuggling consignments of up to thirty tons of marijuanna, and had contact with organisations as diverse as MI6, the CIA, the IRA and the Mafia. Following a worldwide operation by the Drug Enforcement Agency, he was busted and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison at the Terre Haute Penitentiary, Indiana. He was released in April 1995 after serving seven years of his sentence. Told with humour, charm and candour, Mr Nice is his own extraordinary story.
Read online
  • 1 086
The Laws of Our Fathers

The Laws of Our Fathers

Scott Turow

Mystery & Thrillers

In Kindle County, a woman is killed in an apparent random drive-by shooting. The woman turns out to be the ex-wife of a prominent state senator and an old acquaintance of Judge Sonia Klonsky, on whose desk the case lands. As the pursuit of justice takes bizarre and unusual turns, Judge Klonsky is brought face-to-face with a host of extraordinary personalities and formidable enemies bent on her destruction.
Read online
  • 1 081
Dark Moon

Dark Moon

David Gemmell

Science Fiction & Fantasy

The peaceful Eldarin were the last of three ancient races.  The mystical Oltor, healers and poets, had fallen before the dread power of the cruel and sadistic Daroth.  Yet in one awesome night the invincible Daroth had vanished from the face of the earth.  Gone were their cities, their armies, their terror.  The Great Northern Desert was their only legacy.  Not a trace remained for a thousand years... The War of the Pearl had raged for seven years and the armies of the four Duchies were exhausted and weary of bloodshed.  But the foremost of the Dukes, Sirano of Romark, possessed the Eldarin Pearl and was determined to unravel its secrets. Then, on one unforgetable day, a dark moon rose above the Great Northern Desert, and a black tidal wave swept across the land.  In moments the desert had vanished beneath lush fields and forests and a great city could be seen glittering in the morning sunlight. From this city re-emerged the blood-hungry Daroth, powerful and immortal, immune to spear and sword.  They had only one desire:  to rid the world of humankind for ever. Now the fate of the human race rests on the talents of three heroes:  Karis, warrior-woman and strategist; Tarantio, the deadliest swordsman of the age; and Duvodas the Healer, who will learn a terrible truth. A new world of myth and magic, love and heroism, from the bestselling author of The Legend of Deathwalker. From the Paperback edition.
Read online
  • 1 080
The Ghost of Grania O'Malley

The Ghost of Grania O'Malley

Michael Morpurgo

Children's Books / Poetry / Historical Fiction

People on Clare Island say that the Big Hill is haunted by fearsome pirates who once terrorized Ireland's coasts. Jessie senses that the Hill possess a magic special enough to give her the strength to deal with a crippling disease. That magic takes physical shape when the ghost of pirate queen Grania O'Malley appears to Jessie with a mission--to save the Hill from a greedy prospector.
Read online
  • 1 074
Passage to Dawn

Passage to Dawn

R. A. Salvatore

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Legacy of the Drow #4: Passage to Dawn Revenge and Resurrection in a Frozen Wasteland! Drizzt and Catti-brie have been away from Mithral Hall for six long years, but the pain of a lost companion still weighs heavily on their strong shoulders. Chasing pirates aboard Captain Deudermont's Sea Sprite is enough to draw their attention away from their grief. Then a mysterious castaway on an uncharted island sends them back to the very source of their pain, and into the clutches of a demon with vengeance on his mind.
Read online
  • 1 072
Just an Ordinary Day: Stories

Just an Ordinary Day: Stories

Shirley Jackson

Horror / Biographies & Memoirs / Short Stories

The stories in this edition represent the great diversity of her work, from humor to her shocking explorations of the human psyche. The tales range, chronologically, from the writings of her college days and residence in Greenwich Village in the early 1940s, to the unforgettably chilling stories from the period just before her death. They provide an exciting overview of the evolution of her craft through a progression of forms and styles, and add significantly to the body of her published work. Just an Ordinary Day is a testament to how large a talent Shirley Jackson had and to the depth, breadth, and complexity of her writing. Though this remarkable literary life was cut short, Jackson clearly established a unique voice that has won a permanent place in the canon of outstanding American literature, and remains a powerful influence on generations of readers and writers. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Read online
  • 1 071
234