Leisure Reading — Literature

Every night for three years the vengeful King Shahriyar sleeps with a different virgin, executing her the next morning. To end this brutal pattern and to save her own life, the vizier's daughter, Shahrazad, begins to tell the king stories of adventure, love, riches and wonder - tales of mystical lands peopled with princes and hunchbacks, the Angel of Death and magical spirits, tales of the voyages of Sindbad, of Ali Baba outwitting a band of forty thieves and of jinnis trapped in rings and in lamps. The sequence of stories will last 1,001 nights.

Kidnapped form his safe California home. Thrown into a life-and-death struggle on the frozen Artic wilderness. Half St. Bernard, half shepard, Buck learns many hard lessons as a sled dog: the lesson of the leash, of the cold, of near-starvation and cruelty. And the greatest lesson he learns from his last owner, John Thornton: the power of love and loyalty.

Claudia, an English student down on her luck, meets Paul in a bar in Paris, agrees to accompany him on a trip to Burma, and finds herself travelling back in time to a magical country where oxcarts outnumber automobiles, enchantment rubs shoulders with poverty, and the government has resorted to wholesale drug trafficking to keep the economy afloat. But Paul has enemies who want to see him dead. Magic turns into nightmare, the journey becomes a flight – and then Claudia finds out what Paul really wants her to do.

hronicles the fantastic voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, principally to four marvelous realms: Lilliput, where the people are six inches tall; Brobdingnag, a land inhabited by giants; Laputa, a wondrous flying island; and a country where the Houyhnhnms, a race of intelligent horses, are served by savage humanoid creatures called Yahoos.

It’s not difficult to predict the future.
Just scan today’s headlines and extend the trends: climate change, energy depletion, terrorist threats, government surveillance, ethnic strife, weapons proliferation, genetic engineering, corporate ethics and so on.
Yet on an individual level, there’s an issue that’s perhaps even more disturbing: identity theft.
In an era of security paranoia, every aspect of our lives will be recorded: from DNA to IQ; from official documentation to private finance; from medical history to psychological profile.
When that information is hacked or erased, it will be the innocent victim with no credentials who’ll be labeled a security risk.

Following a mysterious map of dubious reliability, a small group of men trek into southern Africa in search of a lost friend-and a lost treasure, the fabled mines of King Solomon. Led by the English adventurer and fortune hunter Allan Quartermain, they discover a frozen corpse, survive untold dangers in remote mountains and deserts, and encounter the merciless King Twala en route to the legendary hoard of diamonds.

The daughters of an American colonel become caught up in the conflict between the two nations contest for supremacy in North America, and embroiled in the war between the Native American allies of the two sides. One of the world's most widely-read American adventure stories.

An exciting account of a jungle expedition's encounter with living dinosaurs, written with the same panache exhibited in the author's Sherlock Holmes mysteries. This 1912 novel, the first installment of the Professor Challenger series, follows an eccentric paleontologist and his companions into the wilds of the Amazon, where they discover iguanodons, pterodactyls, and savage ape-people.

This is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopedia of whaling lore and legend, Moby-Dick is a haunting, mesmerizing, and important social commentary populated with several of the most unforgettable and enduring characters in literature.

An irresistible blend of romance, intrigue, and suspense, this timeless historical adventure recalls the terror following the French Revolution, when mobs ruled the streets of Paris and hundreds of royals were condemned to face the guillotine daily. The only hope of many was a courageous leader who spirited aristocrats across the Channel to England and safety.

This swashbuckling epic of chivalry, honor, and derring-do, set in France during the 1620s, is richly populated with romantic heroes, unattainable heroines, kings, queens, cavaliers, and criminals in a whirl of adventure, espionage, conspiracy, murder, vengeance, love, scandal, and suspense. Dumas transforms minor historical figures into larger- than-life characters: the Comte d’Artagnan, an impetuous young man in pursuit of glory; the beguilingly evil seductress “Milady”; the powerful and devious Cardinal Richelieu; the weak King Louis XIII and his unhappy queen—and, of course, the three musketeers themselves, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, whose motto “all for one, one for all” has come to epitomize devoted friendship.

Treasure Island, a coming of age novel, is perhaps the best adventure story of all time. The young Jim Hawkins is hired by an old seadog Billy Bones to look out for a sailor with one leg. Despite this precaution, Bones is found dead in suspicious circumstances. Searching through his belongings Jim finds a treasure map, which he shows to the local doctor and a wealthy squire. They engage a ship and captain, but unwittingly they hire the ruthless and immensely strong Long John Silver, who has designs on the treasure, as their cook.