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Horatio Alger, was a 19th-century American author who wrote over 100 novels. Many of his works have been called "rags to riches" stories, describing how down-and-out boys achieve the American Dream of wealth and success through hard work, courage, determination, and concern for others. Because of this Alger is a a significant figure in the history of American cultural and social ideals.

The setting is the civil war, and the hero (or anti-hero as it seems at first) is Henry Flemming, a young Northern boy who, swept up in the patriotic tide, joins the Union Army. He is plunged into the conflict, and his courage fails him - he runs from his first battle. He finds out later that his side was victorious, and he feels that he will never be able to face himself or his comrades again. He slowly recovers his courage in time for a crucial confrontation.

Bram Stoker created an incredible novel in Dracula. The success of the vampire novel unfortunately overshadowed most of his other writings. This volume contains nine of his best short stories, including the one in which the character of Dracula first appeared.

Every man walks with a shadow...but what happens when he acquires a second one? Just ask Brazos, a cold-blooded killer for hire with blood on his hands and a posse on his tail. Desperate for cash, Brazos accepts $200 to gun down a local man named Brant. He’ll earn every penny...but in the end there’ll be the devil to pay. Because to put a bullet in Brant means putting one in his partner as well - an eerie stranger schooled in the black art of witchcraft. This is one killing that brings with it a deadly curse - and a second shadow.

In Mastery of Destiny, James Allen delves even farther into the themes in that famous work, the ideas that concentrations, willpower and motivation and lead to happiness and prosperity.

An obscure original manuscript of Marco Polo’s travels ... A tantalizing clue to the site of Kublai Khan’s fabled burial site ... A chance to unearth the truth behind a long-lost treasure. It’s an opportunity that would make Indiana Jones drop everything but his whip and race off to China. But he’d be too late. Lieutenant Jonathan Daly is way ahead of him. Two bullet holes and a bad case of malaria may not be enough to stop Daly, but a crew of criminals, a brood of British agents, and the entire Chinese army are all in the game ... and determined to keep him out of it.

This story recounts the legend of Keesh, an Eskimo boy who used "brains not brawn" to defeat a powerful polar bear and save his people from starvation.

Jack London is among the greatest adventure writers in American Literature, and The Call of the Wild is his masterpiece, a work that takes us where few tales have dared: into the mind of an animal. Buck is taken from the warmth of the Santa Clara valley to work as a sled-dog in the frozen Yukon during the Gold Rush. There he is forced to lose his domesticated ways and rediscover his natural instincts.

Joseph Conrad was a native of Poland, yet many critics regard him as one of the greatest English novelists. This is all the more remarkable, since he did not learn to speak English fluently until he was in his 20s. He became a naturalized British citizen in 1886. He wrote many books and stories, but the two that remain most popluar are Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. Lord Jim is both an adventure story and a story of tragedy and repentence.

Jack London gained his first and most lasting fame as the author of tales of the Klondike gold rush. This, his first collection of stories, draws on his experience in the Yukon. The stories tell of gambles won and lost, of endurance and sacrifice, and often turn on the qualities of exceptional women and on the relations between the white adventurers and the native tribes. Stories included are: "The white Silence," "The Son of the Wolf," "The Men of Forty Mile," "In a Far Country," "To the Man on Trail," "The Priestly Perogative," "The Wisdom of the Trail," "The Wife of the King.""An Odyssey of the North."

Silas Blackburn is killed on the day before he intended to remove his grandson from his will. For some strange reason he decided to sleep where many of his family have died in agony and he is found dead in this locked and abandoned room. How did someone get in? And who did it? The detectives who show up to investigate the case suspect any number of characters, including the grandson who has no memory of what he did that night but who was in the area.

The story concerns a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who conducts a great experiment to see if he can create a living being from the body parts of corpses. Only whe the experiment is successful does he begin to think of the ethics and consequences of what he has done. The creature he created becomes embittered when he finds that no one will love him becuase of his appearance.

An officer accused of being a traitor says he "never wants to hear of the United States again". His wish is granted - and ends up being a terrible punishment.

The Four Million was written in 1906 when roughly four million people lived in New York City. It opens with a reference to Ward McAllister's "assertion that there were only "400" people in New York City who were really worth noticing.

Guy de Maupassant is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story as well as one of the form's finest writers. His stories are characterized by their economy of style and efficient, seemingly effortless dénouements

Typhoon is the story of an old steamer and a veteran captain. The captain is normally calm and in control but the ship's sudden envelopment by a typhoon brings out both the best characteristics and the worst of the captain and his crew. This story is a penetrating look at the human spirit in the face of disaster - a recurring theme in Conrad's works.

These two famous stories by Joseph Conrad are both told by the same narrator - Marlow. As the main character in Youth, Marlow tells the story of his first voyage to the East as second mate on board the Judea. Heart of Darkness features Marlow 22 years later and deals with maturity and old age. This highly symbolic story follows Marlow as he recounts his adventure into the Congo to a group of men aboard a ship anchored in the Thames Estuary.

George Ward Nichols was born in Tremont, Maine, on 21st June, 1831. He worked as a journalist until the outbreak of the American Civil War and then joined the Union Army. He served under General William Sherman and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He published The Story of the Great March, essentially a journal he kept during that march in 1865 and it became an immediate best seller.

Davy Crockett was born on a mountaintop in Tennessee (1786). He was a rugged frontiersman who befriended the Indians and helped keep the peace between them and the settlers. He was elected to Congress and, after losing a reelection bid, died a courageous death at The Alamo (1836). He was, and continues to be, a legendary American hero. This is his story in his own words.

W. H. Hudson was born in 1841 in Buenos Aires and seems to have been a sort of permanently displaced person. He moved to London in 1869 and wrote a series of remarkable books, most with a wilderness setting. In 1904, when he was 63, he focused on an Indian legend for Green Mansions, a memorable romance of the jungle for which he is now chiefly remembered. His epitaph reads, "He Loved Birds and Green Places and the Wind on the Heath, and Saw Brightness of the Skirts of God."