Jack London's 1904 novel "The Sea Wolf" is the story of Humphrey van Weyden, an effete gentleman who finds himself shipwrecked when the San Francisco ferry his is aboard collides with another ship in the fog. Adrift in the bay, Humphrey is rescued by Wolf Larsen, the brutish captain of a seal-hunting schooner, the "Ghost". However his relief in being saved is short-lived, for he is soon put to work, essentially enslaved as a cabin boy forced to do...

Twenty-year-old Bethany Schrock is restless. Her love life has derailed, her faith hangs by a thread, and she is spending the incredibly hot summer days wading through a lifetime's accumulation of junk at the home of five ancient Amish sisters. About the only thing that holds her interest is the spirited and dangerously handsome Jimmy Fisher--and he seems bent on irritating her to no end. When the sly old sisters and a guest at the Inn get Bethany...

Death Comes For The Archbishop shares a limitless, craggy beauty with the New Mexico landscape of desert, mountain, and canyon in which its central action takes place, and its evocations of that landscape suggest why Willa Cather is acknowledged without question as the most poetically exact chronicler of the American frontier. Told with a directness that overlays its profound artistry, this story of the nineteenth century missionary priest Father...

"The plot chronicles a hot dispute between two Scotsmen, one a devout but naive Roman Cahtolic, the other a zealous but naive atheist. Their fanatically held opinions --leading to a duel that is proposed but never fought -- inspire a host of comic adventures whose allegorical levels vigorously explore the debate between theisim and atheism."--Page 4 of cover.

"A city is struck by an epidemic of "white blindness." Authorities confine the blind to a vacant mental hospital secured by armed guards under instructions to shoot anyone trying to escape. Inside, the criminal element among the blind holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and assaulting women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers--among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears--through...

"Cornelius van Baerle, a respectable tulip-grower, lives only to cultivate the elusive black tulip and win a magnificent prize for its creation. But after his powerful godfather is assassinated, the unwitting Cornelius becomes caught up in a deadly political intrigue and is falsely accused of high treason by a bitter rival. Condemned to life imprisonment, his only comfort is Rosa, the jailer's beautiful daughter, and together they concoct a plan to...

After an old gypsy woman is killed by his car, lawyer Billy Halleck is stricken with a flesh-wasting malady and must undertake a nightmarish journey to confront the forces of death.

Anna Karenina is the wife of a prominant Russian government official. She leads a correct but confining upper-middle-class existence. She seems content with her life as a proper companion to her dignified, unaffectionate husband and an adoring mother to her young son, until she meets Count Vronsky, a young officer of the guards. He pursues her and she falls madly in love with him. Her husband refuses to divorce her, so she gives up everything, including...

Ship's surgeon Lemuel Gulliver is stranded on the island of Lilliput after his boat founders. In the first of many weird and wonderful adventures he meets a diminutive people prepared to wage war over the correct way to crack an egg. The castaway also visits a land full of giants, with wasps the size of partridges; a floating island where the best brains are engaged in trying to extract sunshine from cucumbers; and a land of civilized, rational-minded...

“No writing today can equal [Susan] Howatch's ability to write compelling novels that combine theology and psychology in a complex, fast-moving plot offering beautifully delineated characters and the suspense of a mystery/thriller. . . . The denouement will leave readers breathless.”—Publishers Weekly
Nicholas Darrow is a strong-willed and independent-minded man, full of the energy and assurance of his age and his...