Inspired by the life of Alexander Selkirk, a sailor who lived for several years on a Pacific island, the novel tells the story of Crusoe's survival after shipwreck on an island, interaction with the mainland's native inhabitants, and eventual rescue. Read variously as economic fable, religious allegory, or imperialist fantasy, Crusoe has never lost its appeal as one of the most compelling adventure stories of all time.

"While attempting to escape a civil war, four people are kidnapped and transported to the Tibetan mountains. After their plane crashes, they are found by a mysterious Chinese man. He leads them to a monastery...a land of mystery and matchless beauty where life is lived in tranquil wonder, beyond the grasp of a doomed world. It is here, in Shangri-La, where destinies will be discovered and the meaning of paradise will be unveiled." --Cover

The journey begins on a ship at sea in 1766, with a boy named Billy Marvel. After surviving a shipwreck, he finds work in a London theatre. There, his family flourishes for generations as brilliant actors until 1900, when young Leontes Marvel is banished from the stage. Nearly a century later, Joseph Jervis runs away from school and seeks refuge with a reclusive uncle in London. Albert Nightingale's strange, beautiful house, with its mysterious portraits...

Israeli delegates to a planned U.N. conference that promises to finally bring peace to the Middle East, are forced instead to fight for their lives when the plane in which they are traveling is forced to crash land at an ancient desert site where they are confronted by crack Palestinian commandos.

Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat,...

After his experiences surviving alone in the Canadian wilderness, sixteen-year-old Brian finds it increasingly difficult to live as a normal high school student and begins planning to return to the place where he feels he really belongs.

The Swiss Family Robinson (German: Der Schweizerische Robinson) is a novel by Johann David Wyss, first published in 1812, about a Swiss family shipwrecked in the East Indies en route to Port Jackson, Australia.Written by Swiss pastor Johann David Wyss and edited by his son Johann Rudolf Wyss and illustrated by his son Johann Emmanuel Wyss, the novel was intended to teach his four sons about family values, good husbandry, the uses of the natural world...

The 50th Anniversary Edition of the Lord of the Flies is the volume that every fan of this classic book will have to own! Lord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, igniting passionate debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. Though critically acclaimed, it was largely ignored upon its initial publication. Yet soon it became a cult favorite among both students and literary critics who...

A transport plane carrying an important Taliban detainee for interrogation is shot down in a blizzard over the Hindu Kush. The storm makes rescue impossible, and for two people, navigator Michael Parson and a woman Army interpreter, Sergeant Gold. A battle for survival begins across some of the most forbidding terrain on earth, against not only the hazards of nature, but the treacheries of man: the Taliban stalking them; the villagers, whose loyalty...

Defoe's famous work is actually based on the true story of the shipwrecked traveler, Alexander Selkirk, and it has thrilled generations of readers, who have counted among them kings and philosophers, even the founding fathers of the United States.