Mark Twain

A memoir of the steamboat era on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War. The first half details a brief history of the river from its discovery by Hernando de Soto in 1541 and describes Twain's career as a Mississippi steamboat pilot, the fulfillment of a childhood dream. The second half of Life on the Mississippi tells of Twain's return, many years after, to travel the river from St. Louis to New Orleans. By then the competition from...

A stranger who feels mistreated by a supposedly incorruptible town concocts a vengeful scheme to test the honesty of its leading citizens.

Roxana, a light-skinned slave nurse on a large Southern plantation, is desperate to give her son a better chance at life than she had ever enjoyed, and so she switches him with the master's son. Years later, when Roxana's real son has turned to gambling, murder, and theft, it is the country lawyer, Pudd'nhead Wilson, who unmasks the true identity of the two. Considered Twain's most courageous work, this short novel is one of the most sensitive treatments...

First published in 1865, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was Mark Twain's first real literary success and arguably launched his career as a writer. The story revolves around a tale the narrator once heard about a gambler named Jim Smiley who would bet on absolutely anything. An amusing tale of mistaken identity and a frog called Daniel Webster, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is a must-read that will not disappoint...

The story of the ill-fated voyage of a whaling ship led by the fanatical Captain Ahab in search of the white whale that had crippled him. AA masterpiece of storytelling, this epic saga pits Ahab, a brooding and fanatical sea captain, against the great white whale that crippled him. In telling the tale of Ahab's passion for revenge and the fateful voyage that ensued, Melville produced far more than the narrative of a hair-raising journey; Moby-Dick...

The adventures and pranks of a mischievous boy growing up in a nineteenth-century Mississippi River town as he witnesses a crime, hunts for the pirates' treasure, and becomes lost in a cave.