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"The book relates the tale of Hank Morgan, an engineer from 19th century Hartford Connecticut, who is inexplicably transported to the early medieval England of King Arthur. While there he uses his knowledge of modern technology to appear as though he is a magician. Despite his best intentions, Hank?s attempts to modernize the past bring about a tragic end. A bittersweet depiction of the Arthurian legend through the eyes of a 19th century American..."...
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"From Percival Everett--a recipient of the NBCC Lifetime Achievement Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, and numerous PEN awards--comes James, a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby...
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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...
4) Roughing it
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Originally published over one hundred years ago, "Roughing It" tells the (almost) true story of Mark Twain's rollicking adventures across the United States. A hilarious account of how the author tried finding wealth in the rocks of Nevada, it was published before his most famous works and shows why he would grow to become one of the most beloved American writers of all time. The story follows many of Twain's early adventures, including a visit to...
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Presents Mark Twain's authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave as he intended.
"I've struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. "And I will give it away to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography." Thus, after dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain embarked on his "Final (and Right) Plan"...
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This grand old childhood classic relates a small-town boy's pranks and escapades with humor and wisdom that appeal to readers of every age. In addition to his everyday stunts (searching for buried treasure, trying to impress the adored Becky Thatcher), Tom experiences a dramatic turn of events when he witnesses a murder, runs away, and returns to attend his own funeral and testify in court.
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Fresh from his escapades with Tom Sawyer, with six thousand dollars in the bank and the Widow Douglas as his guardian, Huck Finn faces a new challenge: his father, Pap, who is so determined to get his hands on Huck's fortune that he kidnaps Huck and threatens to kill him. Escaping from Pap, Huck meets the runaway slave, Jim, who plans to head north and buy his wife and children our of slavery. Huck joins Jim on a salvaged raft, and together the two...
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In this representative volume, "The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories" the reader will find twenty-four of Mark Twain's best shorter works. Classic and unforgettable tales that span the author's career are included, such as "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", which is Twain's most famous short story and was his first great success as an author. It is the unforgettable tale of Jim Smiley, the gambler who will bet on anything including...
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Fearing for the safety of her young child's life, a young slave called Roxy swaps her light-skinned baby with that of her master. Her master's child grows up as a slave, while Roxy's child grows up as a white man called "Tom" who becomes cruel and ends up leading a life crime. The book is a cutting indictment of a society based on racial prejudice and slavery brimming with Twain's characteristic wit and irony. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835—1910),...
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In 1885, while The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was becoming one of the best-selling American classics of modern times, Mark Twain began this sequel in which Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Jim head west on the trail of two white girls kidnapped by Sioux warriors. Fifteen thousand words into the work, Twain stopped in the middle of a sentence, never to go back. The unfinished story sat on dusty shelves for more than a hundred years until author
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