Victor Frankenstein leads an idyllic life in Switzerland with his family and friends until a thirst for knowledge sends him off in search of something that no human being has yet attained--the ability to create life. Victor's success soon proves that, through the work of his own hands, he and his family are destined to live a life of pain and suffering.

"The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today" is the collaborative work of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirized the era of political greed and corruption that followed the American Civil War. This period is often referred to as "The Gilded Age" because of this book. The corruption and greed that was typical of the era is exemplified through two fictional narratives; one of the Hawkins family, a poor family from Tennessee who try to get the government...

"The classic first novel of the epic Aubrey/Maturin series, widely considered "the best historical novels ever written" (Richard Snow, New York Times). Ardent, gregarious British naval officer Jack Aubrey is elated to be given his first appointment as commander: the fourteen-gun ship HMS Sophie. Meanwhile-after a heated first encounter that nearly comes to a duel-Aubrey and a brilliant but down-on-his-luck physician, Stephen Maturin, strike up an...

It's summer in New York, and the city is boiling. Unable to stand the heat, Dan Fortune's girlfriend Marty asks him to pawn her diamond ring in order to buy them a few weeks by the seashore. Fortune does as told, but picks up some business while at the pawnshop. There he meets Claude Marais, brother of the pawnbroker and veteran of the humiliating French defeats in Vietnam and Algiers. Fearing her husband's life is in danger, Claude's wife hires Fortune...

Now that Linda "Pidge" Lewellen is grown up, she tells Travis McGee, once her girlhood idol, that either she's going crazy or Howie, her affable ex-jock of a husband is trying to kill her. McGee checks things out, and gives Pidge the all clear. But when Pidge and Howie sail away to kiss and make up, McGee has second thoughts. If only he can get to Pidge before he has time for any more thinking....

New York Times bestselling author of the Spenser series of crime thrillers—Book 1 in the series
“The toughest, funniest, wisest, private eye in the field these days.”—Houston Chronicle

Spenser earned his degree in the school of hard knocks, so he is ready when a Boston university hires him to recover a rare, stolen manuscript. He is hardly surpised that his only clue is a radical...

Mavis Ironmonger is nobody's idea of a good diplomatic wife. She drinks too much, she's awfully friendly with the staff at the Washington embassy, and her music-hall roots have a way of bursting out at the most inappropriate moments. Indeed, it's at an embassy reception that Mavis manages to insult a visiting ambassador and get herself hauled off to sober up. With the party winding down, Mavis is due downstairs, to say the official goodbyes, but in...

Just seventy-two hours ago, Dirk Pitt was lying in the hot California sun with a beautiful woman, a Scotch-rocks in one hand, but an urgent call from Admiral James Sandecker, his commander at the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), brings Pitt out of the warm Pacific breezes and straight into a North Atlantic deep freeze. The reason: the dis- covery of a long-missing luxury yacht, en route to a secret White House rendezvous, frozen solid...

The end of the colonies' fight for independence begins a new and glorious battle to build the new nation. When Abraham Kent falls in love with his step-sister he sets in motion a ate that will drive a generation westward -- until Amanda: a girl-child with the heart of a woman, seeks the new frontier that is this land's greatest opportunity--and most awesome dread. The struggles of an emerging new nation are woven into this epic of pioneers settling...

Hero Dirk Pitt finds the "Titanic" in the midst of a search for a secret cache of byzanium, a rare radioactive element that could be the key to America's defense weaponry--but Russian obstacles could keep Pitt from both raising the legendary ship and protecting his country.