The Sea Wolf


Jack London - 1904
    He is set adrift in the Bay, eventually being picked up by Wolf Larsen.Larsen is the captain of a seal-hunting schooner, the Ghost. Brutal and cynical, yet also highly intelligent and intellectual, he rules over his ship and terrorizes the crew with the aid of his exceptionally great physical strength.

The Mark of Zorro


Johnston McCulley - 1919
    Missions are pillaged, native peasants are abused, and innocent men and women are persecuted by the corrupt governor and his army.But a champion of freedom rides the highways. His identity hidden behind a mask, the laughing outlaw Zorro defies the tyrant's might. A deadly marksman and a demon swordsman, his flashing blade leaves behind . . .First published in 1919, The Mark of Zorro has inspired countless films and television adventures. Now read how the legend began.

Out of Control


Mary Connealy - 2011
    She particularly enjoys studying the fossils and formations in the magnificent cave near her father's house. The cave seems plenty safe--until the day a mysterious intruder steals the rope she uses to climb out.Rafe Kincaid is a man used to being in control--of himself, his brothers, and his family's ranch. The last thing he expects is to find a woman trapped in the cavern on his land--or to be forced to kiss her!Rafe is more intrigued by Julia than any woman he's ever known. But when their developing relationship threatens a reconciliation with his brothers, will Rafe have to choose between his family and this new love that could heal his troubled heart and secure his happiness?

Perfidia


James Ellroy - 2014
    The United States teeters on the edge of war. The roundup of allegedly treasonous Japanese Americans is about to begin. And in L.A., a Japanese family is found dead. Murder or ritual suicide? The investigation will draw four people into a totally Ellroy-ian tangle: a brilliant Japanese American forensic chemist; an unsatisfiably adventurous young woman; one police officer based in fact (William H. "Whiskey Bill" Parker, later to become the groundbreaking chief of the LAPD), the other the product of Ellroy's inimitable imagination (Dudley Smith, arch villain of The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz). As their lives intertwine, we are given a story of war and of consuming romance, a searing exposé of the Japanese internment, and an astonishingly detailed homicide investigation. In Perfidia, Ellroy delves more deeply than ever before into his characters' intellectual and emotional lives. But it has the full-strength, unbridled story-telling audacity that has marked all the acclaimed work of the Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction.

Flappers and Philosophers


F. Scott Fitzgerald - 1920
    He was the self-styled spokesman of the "Lost Generation" and author of The Great Gatsby (1925). His debut novel, This Side of Paradise (1920) examines the lives and morality of post-World War I youth. Flappers and Philosophers (1920) was his first collection of short stories. His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), demonstrates an evolution and maturity in his writing, and provides an excellent portrait of America during the Jazz Age, as does Tales of the Jazz Age (1922).

The Second Opinion


Michael Palmer - 2009
    Thea Sperelakis, diagnosed as a teen with Asperger’s syndrome, has always been an outsider. She has a brilliant medical mind, and a remarkable recall of details, but her difficulty in dealing with hidden agendas and interpersonal conflicts have led her to leave the complex, money-driven dynamics of the hospital, and to embrace working with the poor, embattled  patients of Doctors Without Borders. Her father, Petros, is one of the most celebrated internal medicine specialists in the world, and the founder of the cutting-edge Sperelakis Center for Diagnostic Medicine at Boston’s sprawling, powerful Beaumont Clinic.Thea’s rewarding life in Africa is turned upside-down when Petros is severely injured by a hit-and-run driver. He is in the Beaumont ICU, in a deep coma. No one thinks he will survive. Thea must return home. Two of Petros’ other children, both physicians, battle Thea and her eccentric brother, Dimitri, by demanding that treatment for their father be withheld.As Thea uncovers the facts surrounding the disaster, it seems more and more to be no accident. Petros, himself, is the only witness. Who would want him dead? The answers are trapped in his brain . . . until he looks at Thea and begins slowly to blink a terrifying message.In The Second Opinion, Michael Palmer has created a cat-and-mouse game where one woman must confront a conspiracy of doctors to uncover an evil practice that touches every single person who ever has a medical test. With sympathetic characters and twists and betrayals that come from the most unlikely places, The Second Opinion will make you question…everything.

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine


John Fox Jr. - 1908
    published this great romantic novel of the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky and Virginia in 1908, and the book quickly became one of America's favorites. It has all the elements of a good romance -- a superior but natural heroine, a hero who is an agent of progress and enlightenment, a group of supposedly benighted mountaineers to be drawn into the flow of mainstream American culture, a generous dose of social and class struggle, and a setting among the misty coves and cliffs of the blue Cumberlands.Reprinted with a foreword by John Ed Pearce, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine has all the excitement and poignance that caught and held readers' interest when the book first appeared.

I Was Amelia Earhart


Jane Mendelsohn - 1996
    And she tells us about herself.There is her love affair with flying ("The sky is flesh") . . . .There are her memories of the past: her childhood desire to become a heroine ("Heroines did what they wanted") . . . her marriage to G.P. Putnam, who promoted her to fame, but was willing to gamble her life so that the book she was writing about her round-the-world flight would sell out before Christmas.There is the flight itself -- day after magnificent or perilous or exhilarating or terrifying day ("Noonan once said any fool could have seen I was risking my life but not living it").And there is, miraculously, an island ("We named it Heaven, as a kind of joke").And, most important, there is Noonan . . .

Dark Summer


Iris Johansen - 2008
    When a man arrives with his wounded black Lab, Ned, she has no idea that she is about to be plunged into a whirlwind of terror and destruction.Jude Marrock is out for revenge and has no choice but to involve Devon in a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game with an escalating body count. She doesn’t trust him one bit, but when the shots start flying and friends start falling, she finds herself with nowhere else to run. And there are innocent lives, both human and animal, at stake, including Ned and his mysterious pack. Is Jude her salvation or her damnation? Are the secrets he’s protecting worth killing for . . . or dying for?With a lightning-fast pace, unforgettable characters, and gut-wrenching action, Dark Summer is compelling new terrain for this master storyteller.

Arabian Nights: The Marvels and Wonders of The Thousand and One Nights, Volume 1 of 2


Jack D. Zipes
    First introduced into the West in 1704, the stories of The Thousand and One Nights are most familiar to American readers in sanitized children's versions. This modern edition, based on Richard F. Burton's unexpurgated translation, restores the lushness of the original Arabic. Here are the famous adventures of Sinbad, "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," and "Aladdin and the Magic Lamp." Here too are less familiar stories, such as "Prince Behram and the Princess Al-Datma," a delightful early version of The Taming of the Shrew, and "The Wily Dalilah and her Daughter Zaynab," a hilarious tale about two crafty women who put an entire city of men in their place. Intricate and imaginative, these stories-within-stories told over a thousand and one nights continue to captivate readers as they have for centuries. "Arabian Nights: The Marvels and Wonders of The Thousand and One Nights, Volume 2 of 2, Adapted By Jack Zipes"

The Shepherd


Frederick Forsyth - 1975
    But for the Royal Air Force pilot who has just taken off from West Germany, this single-seat jet is the only way to make it back to England for Christmas morning. His flight plan is simple; the fuel tank is full. In sixty-six minutes, he will be back in Blighty. But then the plane begins to fail. First the compass goes haywire, then the radio dies. Lost and alone above the English coast, the pilot is searching for a landing strip when the fog closes in, signaling certain death. He has given up hope when a second shadow appears—a Mosquito fighter-bomber of World War II vintage. The plane is a “shepherd,” guiding the Vampire to a safe landing, and its appearance is a gift from fate, a miracle out of time—but for one lonely pilot, the mystery has just begun.

Young Pioneers


Rose Wilder Lane - 1932
    At first their new life is full of promise: The wheat is high, the dugout is warm and cozy, and a new baby is born to share in their happiness. Then disaster strikes, and David must go east for the winter to find work. Molly is left alone with the baby -- with nothing but her own courage to face the dangers of the harsh prairie winter.

Ideal


Ayn Rand - 1934
    Accused of murder, she is on the run and turns for help to six fans who have written letters to her, each telling her that she represents their ideal—a respectable family man, a far-left activist, a cynical artist, an evangelist, a playboy, and a lost soul. Each reacts to her plight in his own way, their reactions a glimpse into their secret selves and their true values. In the end their responses to her pleas give Kay the answers she has been seeking.

The Nick Adams Stories


Ernest Hemingway - 1966
    The 2nd section, On His Own, includes "The Light of the World", "The Battler", "The Killers", "The Last Good Country" & "Crossing the Mississippi".The 3rd section, War, has "Night Before Landing", "Nick Sat Against the Wall", "Now I Lay Me", "A Way You'll Never Be" & "In Another Country". The 4th section, Soldier Home, has "Big Two-Hearted River", "The End of Something", "The Three-Day Blow" & "Summer People". The 5th section, Company of Two, has "Wedding Day", "On Writing", "An Alpine Idyll", "Cross-Country Snow" & "Fathers & Sons".

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters


Gordon Dahlquist - 2006
    But for Miss Temple, Roger Bascombe’s cruel rejection will ignite a harrowing quest for answers, plunging her into a mystery as dizzying as a hall of mirrors—and a remote estate where danger abounds and all inhibitions are stripped bare.Nothing could have prepared Miss Temple for where her pursuit of Roger Bascombe would take her—or for the shocking things she would find behind the closed doors of forbidding Harschmort Manor: men and women in provocative disguise, acts of licentiousness and violence, heroism and awakening. But she will also find two allies: Cardinal Chang, a brutal assassin with the heart of a poet, and a royal doctor named Svenson, at once fumbling and heroic—both of whom, like her, lost someone at Harschmort Manor. As the unlikely trio search for answers—hurtling them from elegant brothels to gaslit alleyways to shocking moments of self-discovery-- they are confronted by puzzles within puzzles. And the closer they get to the truth, the more their lives are in danger. For the conspiracy they face—an astonishing alchemy of science, perverted religion, and lust for power—is so terrifying as to be beyond belief.