Measuring the World


Daniel Kehlmann - 2005
    One of them, the Prussian aristocrat Alexander von Humboldt, negotiates savanna and jungle, travels down the Orinoco, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores every hole in the ground. The other, the barely socialized mathematician and astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss, does not even need to leave his home in Göttingen to prove that space is curved. He can run prime numbers in his head. He cannot imagine a life without women, yet he jumps out of bed on his wedding night to jot down a mathematical formula. Von Humboldt is known to history as the Second Columbus. Gauss is recognized as the greatest mathematical brain since Newton. Terrifyingly famous and more than eccentric in their old age, the two meet in Berlin in 1828. Gauss has hardly climbed out of his carriage before both men are embroiled in the political turmoil sweeping through Germany after Napoleon’s fall.Already a huge best seller in Germany, Measuring the World marks the debut of a glorious new talent on the international scene.

The Wrecking Storm (Thomas Tallant, #2)


Michael Ward - 2021
    

Fortune's Fool


Rafael Sabatini - 1922
    Holles, desperate for an escape from his hopeless situation and almost certain execution, sees no option but to accept the Duke of Wellington’s rather dubious commission – to abduct a famous actress and bring her before him. However, as events take an unexpected turn, Holles is presented with the opportunity to be reinstated to his former glory.

Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel


Jerome K. Jerome - 1889
    and his friends George and Harris decide that a jaunt up the Thames would suit them to a 'T'. But when they set off, they can hardly predict the troubles that lie ahead with tow-ropes, unreliable weather-forecasts and tins of pineapple chunks - not to mention the devastation left in the wake of J.'s small fox-terrier Montmorency. Three Men in a Boat was an instant success when it appeared in 1889, and proved so popular that Jerome reunited his now older - but not necessarily wiser - heroes in Three Men on the Bummel, for a picaresque bicycle tour of Germany. With their benign escapism, authorial discursions and wonderful evocation of the late-Victorian 'clerking classes', both novels hilariously capture the spirit of their age.

The Shortstop


Zane Grey - 1909
    Against his mother's advice and wishes, he quits, and leaves home to become a professional baseball player

The Pendragon Legend


Antal Szerb - 1934
    Invited to the family seat--Pendragon Castle in North Wales--Batky receives a mysterious phone call warning him not to go; but he does and finds himself in a bizarre world of mysticism, romance, animal experimentation, and planned murder. His quest to solve the central mystery takes him down strange byways--old libraries and warehouse cellars, Welsh mountains, and underground tombs.

Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade


Patrick Dennis - 1955
    It was made into a play, a Broadway as well as a Hollywood musical, and a fabulous movie starring Rosalind Russell. Since then, Mame has taken her rightful place in the pantheon of Great and Important People as the world's most beloved, madcap, devastatingly sophisticated, and glamorous aunt. She is impossible to resist, and this hilarious story of an orphaned ten-year-old boy sent to live with his aunt is as delicious a read in the twenty-first century as it was in the 1950s.

Lost in the Barrens


Farley Mowat - 1956
    They set out on an adventure that proves longer and more dangerous than they could have imagined. Drawing on his knowledge of the ways of the wilderness and the implacable northern elements, Farley Mowat has created a memorable tale of daring and adventure. When first published in 1956, Lost in the Barrens won the Governor-General’s Award for Juvenile Literature, the Book-of-the-Year Medal of the Canadian Association of Children’s Librarians and the Boys’ Club of America Junior Book Award.

The Afterlife of George Cartwright


John Steffler - 1992
    Described quietly by historians as “soldier, diarist, entrepreneur,” George Cartwright emerges in Steffler’s tale as a character of overwhelming appetite and ambition. Until this time Cartwright’s greatest legacy has been the place in Labrador named after him and the journal he wrote during his years there, when he lived amongst Native people and ran a successful trading post. Now his legacy becomes our own: a telling portrait of our past; a warning.

Sleepy Hollow: Rise Headless and Ride


Richard Gleaves - 2013
     He's a STAR WARS fan and a history geek. He doesn't believe in ghosts or the afterlife. He doesn't believe in psychic powers or tarot cards. He doesn't believe in the Headless Horseman. But Sleepy Hollow will change all that. Because Jason Crane has a heritage to claim. Jason Crane has a Gift to discover. And Jason Crane has an old enemy who will RISE HEADLESS AND RIDE. THE JASON CRANE SERIES re-invents and re-imagines classic American ghost literature. Sleepy Hollow, Salem ("The House of the Seven Gables" and the infamous witch trials), and haunted Washington D.C. and Baltimore ("The Fall of the House of Usher" and other works of Edgar Allen Poe.) The series is set in and among the real-life sights and Halloween events of the modern-day locations. Perfect for planning Halloween tourism! Every place mentioned in Book #1 exists for you to explore: Gory Brook Road, the Tarrytown Lighthouse, the ruin of the Horseman Bridge, the grave of Washington Irving, Patriot's Park, Philipsburg Manor and the haunted Burying Ground of the Old Dutch Church. This eBook edition includes an online MAP of the sights mentioned in the story so that you can follow along or plan a trip. Step into the REAL village of Sleepy Hollow and the world of Jason Crane.

The Far Journey: A Timeslip Novel of Survival on the Oregon Trail


Tom Reppert - 2013
    In modern life, she rebels against the curfews and restrictions of her day, seeing them as unfair hardships. But now in this alien world with its buffalo stampedes, wild Indians, and deadly pestilence, she is about to find out what real hardships are. To get home, she must set aside her Rude Girl persona and learn how to survive.On the trek, Paula meets young Daniel Langdon, hunter and part-time scout, and an infatuation quickly becomes a great passion. She realizes this is the love of her life and to get home she will have to leave him behind. In the tradition of Outlander, The Far Journey is a grand epic of love and tragedy, loyalty and betrayal, peril and survival. Throughout, Paula Masters is tested in body and soul and must discover the strength and toughness inside her. "It has all the elements that make a good book hard to put down." Foster Cline, M. D., author of Parenting with Love and Logic."What a grand, mind-bending tale Tom Reppert has spun!" Jim Payne, author of One Inch above the Water."An Intriguing story that captures you from the first page." Sara Vinduska, author of Reflections.

Tigana


Guy Gavriel Kay - 1990
    It is the tale of a people so cursed by the black sorcery of a cruel despotic king that even the name of their once-beautiful homeland cannot be spoken or remembered... But years after the devastation, a handful of courageous men and women embark upon a dangerous crusade to overthrow their conquerors and bring back to the dark world the brilliance of a long-lost name...Tigana. Against the magnificently rendered background of a world both sensuous and barbaric, this sweeping epic of a passionate people pursuing their dream is breathtaking in its vision, changing forever the boundaries of fantasy fiction.

Harold: The Last of the Saxon Kings


Edward Bulwer-Lytton - 1848
    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid


Michael Ondaatje - 1970
    The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is a virtuoso synthesis of storytelling, history, and myth by a writer who brings us back to our familiar legends with a renewed sense of wonder.

The Good Soldier Švejk


Jaroslav Hašek - 1921
    Playing cards and getting drunk, he uses all his cunning and genial subterfuge to deal with the police, clergy, and officers who chivy him toward battle.Cecil Parrott's vibrant translation conveys the brilliant irreverence of this classic about a hapless Everyman caught in a vast bureaucratic machine.