Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride.

Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.

Sergeant Kendra Pacelli is innocent, but that doesn't matter to the repressive government pursuing her. Mistakes might be made, but they are never acknowledged, especially when billions of embezzled dollars earned from illegal weapons sales are at stake. But where does one run when all Earth and the planets are under the aegis of one government?

The answer: The Freehold of Grainne. There, one may seek asylum and build a new life in a society that doesn't track its residents' every move, which is just what Pacelli has done. But now things are about to go royally to hell. Because Earth's government has found out where she is, and they want her back. Or dead.

Everything that had happened to Nina was real. She had real handcuffs on her wrists, real scars on her back, real fear flooding her mind.

'They're going to kill me,' Nina whispered, and it was almost a relief to finally, finally give up hope.

In a society that allows no more than two children per family under penalty of death, third children are forced into hiding, or to live with false identity papers. In Among the Impostors, Nina Idi was arrested for treason for supposedly trying to trick the Population Police into arresting other students she said were illegal third children. Now she faces torture or death -- unless she agrees to betray three other imprisoned third children. Her dilemma intensifies when she meets the prisoners -- who are only ten, nine, and six.

As she did so brilliantly in the Publishers Weekly best-selling Among the Hidden and in Among the Impostors, Margaret Peterson Haddix once again brings readers to a world in which nothing is as it seems -- a world in which an imprisonment leads to an adventure of mind, body, and spirit.

A poignant and suspenseful retelling of a classic fairy tale set in a war-torn world. In the last months of the Nazi occupation of Poland, two children are left by their father and stepmother to find safety in a dense forest. Because their real names will reveal their Jewishness, they are renamed "Hansel" and "Gretel." They wander in the woods until they are taken in by Magda, an eccentric and stubborn old woman called a "witch" by the nearby villagers.

Magda is determined to save them, even as a German officer arrives in the village with his own plans for the children. Louise Murphy's haunting novel of journey and survival, of redemption and memory, powerfully depicts how war is experienced by families and especially by children.

The Rand scientific expedition entered the lush wilderness of the Amazon and never returned. Years later, one of its members has stumbled out of the world’s most inhospitable rainforest: a former Special Forces soldier – scarred, mutilated, terrified, and mere hours from death – who went in with one arm missing… and came out with both intact.

Unable to comprehend this inexplicable event, the government sends Nathan Rand into this impenetrable secret world of undreamed-of perils to follow the trail of his vanished father… toward mysteries that must be solved at any cost. But the nightmare that is awaiting Nate and his team of scientists and seasoned U.S. Army Rangers dwarfs any danger they anticipated… an ancient, unspoken terror – a power beyond human imagining – that can forever alter the world beyond the dark, lethal confines of the Amazon rainforest for better… and for worse.

The Last American Man is a rousing examination of contemporary American male identity by acclaimed author and journalist, Elizabeth Gilbert. It explores the fascinating true story of Eustace Conway, a man who, at the age of seventeen, left his family's comfortable suburban home to live in the wilds of the Appalachian Mountains.

For more than two decades, Conway has lived there, making fire with sticks, wearing skins from animals he has trapped, and trying to convince Americans to give up their materialistic lifestyles and return with him back to nature. His mythical character challenges all our assumptions about what it is to be a modern man in America; he is a symbol of much we feel how our men should be, but rarely are.

Conway's adventures include traveling the Mississippi in a handmade wooden canoe, walking the two-thousand-mile Appalachian Trail, hiking across the German Alps, and even riding his horse across America. He resides in a thousand-acre forest where he teaches survival skills and attempts to instill in people a deeper appreciation of nature.

Elizabeth Gilbert delivers this intimate portrait of an endlessly complicated man with her trademark wit and spirit. The Last American Man is an unforgettable adventure story of an irrepressible life lived to the extreme.

The Red Army had much to avenge when it finally reached the frontiers of the Reich in January 1945. Political instructors rammed home the message of Wehrmacht and SS brutality. The result was the most terrifying example of fire and sword ever known, with tanks crushing refugee columns under their tracks, mass rape, pillage, and destruction.

Hundreds of thousands of women and children froze to death or were massacred because Nazi Party chiefs, refusing to face defeat, had forbidden the evacuation of civilians. Over seven million fled westwards from the terror of the Red Army.

Antony Beevor reconstructs the experiences of those millions caught up in the nightmare of the Third Reich's final collapse, telling a terrible story of pride, stupidity, fanaticism, revenge and savagery, but also one of astonishing endurance, self-sacrifice and survival against all odds.

Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1: Unmanned is the gripping saga of Yorick Brown, the sole human survivor of a planet-wide plague that instantaneously kills every mammal with a Y chromosome. With his pet monkey Ampersand, Yorick embarks on a journey to find his lost love and discover why he has become the last man on Earth. This volume collects issues #1-5 and features the collaborative work of writer Brian K. Vaughan and artists Pia Guerra and Jose Marzan.

The narrative weaves a tale that is at once humorous, socially relevant, and full of surprises. As Yorick confronts a new world order dominated by women, including female Republicans now in charge of the government and Amazonian groups, he faces numerous threats and mysteries. His sister, seemingly brainwashed, is among the many challenges he must overcome in this post-apocalyptic world.

Award-winning and critically acclaimed, Y: The Last Man is a seminal work in the graphic novel genre, delivering a story that is as entertaining as it is thought-provoking.

Ikääntynyt Aliide Truu asuu yksin taloaan Viron maaseudulla. Maa on itsenäistynyt edellisenä vuonna ja maareformi on alkanut. Vanhan naisen arjen katkaisee pihalle pyörtynyt parikymppinen Zara. Tultuaan tajuihinsa Zara kertoo pakenevansa väkivaltaista miestään. Kohtaaminen nostaa Aliiden mieleen repivät muistot nuoruuden traagisesta rakkaudesta ja valinnoista, jotka sinetöivät hänen lähimpiensä kohtalon. Omiin epätoivoisiin ratkaisuihinsa pakotetun Zaran tilanne puolestaan osoittaa, että vaikka aika on toinen, vaino ei ole loppunut, muuttanut vain muotoaan.

Puhdistuksen syvintä ydintä on petos, johon epätoivoiset tunteet ajavat. Romaani avaa myös Viron vaiettua lähihistoriaa yhden suvun kokemusten kautta. Kirja antaa äänen sodan, kommunismin ja sorron uhreille. 1940-luvulla koettujen nöyryytysten ohella teoksessa nousee esiin nykynaisiin epävakaissa yhteiskunnallisissa olosuhteissa kohdistuva hyväksikäyttö.

On October 12, 1972, a plane carrying a team of young rugby players crashed into the remote, snow-peaked Andes. Out of the forty-five original passengers and crew, only sixteen made it off the mountain alive.

For ten excruciating weeks, they suffered deprivations beyond imagining, confronting nature head-on at its most furious and inhospitable. And to survive, they were forced to do what would have once been unthinkable...

This is their story—one of the most astonishing true adventures of the twentieth century.

Guero Davila is a pilot engaged in drug-smuggling for the local cartels. Teresa Mendoza is his girlfriend, a typical narco's morra—quiet, doting, submissive. But then Guero's caught playing both sides, and in Sinaloa, that means death. Teresa finds herself alone, terrified, friendless, and running to save her life, carrying nothing but a gym bag containing a pistol and a notebook that she has been forbidden to read.

Forced to leave Mexico, she flees to the Spanish city of Melilla, where she meets Santiago Fisterra, a Galician involved in trafficking hashish across the Strait of Gibraltar. When Santiago's partner is captured, it is Teresa who steps in to take his place. Now Teresa has plunged into the dark and ugly world that once claimed Guero's life—and she's about to get in deeper...

Beyond the God Wall

Generations of a tormented human-alien people, caged on a toxic planet, conditioned by constant hunger and war—this is the Dosadi Experiment, and it has succeeded too well. For the Dosadi have bred for Vengeance as well as cunning, and they have learned how to pass through the shimmering God Wall to exact their dreadful revenge on the Universe that created them...

It's still true... That's the first thing James Tillerman says to his sister Dicey every morning. It's still true that their mother has abandoned the four Tillerman children somewhere in the middle of Connecticut. It's still true they have to find their way, somehow, to Great-aunt Cilla's house in Bridgeport, which may be their only hope of staying together as a family.

But when they get to Bridgeport, they learn that Great-aunt Cilla has died, and the home they find with her daughter, Eunice, isn't the permanent haven they've been searching for. So their journey continues to its unexpected conclusion -- and some surprising discoveries about their history, and their future.

This unforgettable odyssey into the distant past carries us back to the awesome mysteries of the exotic, primeval world of The Clan of the Cave Bear, and to Ayla, now grown into a beautiful and courageous young woman. Cruelly cast out by the new leader of the ancient Clan that adopted her as a child, Ayla leaves those she loves behind and travels alone through a stark, open land filled with dangerous animals but few people, searching for the Others, tall and fair like herself. The short summer gives her little time to look, and when she finds a sheltered valley with a herd of hardy steppe horses, she decides to stay and prepare for the long glacial winter ahead. Living with the Clan has taught Ayla many skills but not real hunting. She finally knows she can survive when she traps a horse, which gives her meat and a warm pelt for the winter, but fate has bestowed a greater gift, an orphaned foal with whom she develops a unique kinship.

One winter extends to more; she discovers a way to make fire more quickly and a wounded cave lion cub joins her unusual family, but her beloved animals don't fulfill her restless need for human companionship. Then she hears the sound of a man screaming in pain. She saves tall, handsome Jondalar, who brings her a language to speak and an awakening of love and desire, but Ayla is torn between her fear of leaving her valley and her hope of living with her own kind.

For fans of Hatchet and Island of the Blue Dolphins comes Theodore Taylor’s classic bestseller and Lewis Carroll Shelf Award winner, The Cay. Phillip is excited when the Germans invade the small island of Curaçao. War has always been a game to him, and he’s eager to glimpse it firsthand–until the freighter he and his mother are traveling to the United States on is torpedoed.

When Phillip comes to, he is on a small raft in the middle of the sea. Besides Stew Cat, his only companion is an old West Indian, Timothy. Phillip remembers his mother’s warning about black people: “They are different, and they live differently.” But by the time the castaways arrive on a small island, Phillip’s head injury has made him blind and dependent on Timothy.

“Mr. Taylor has provided an exciting story…The idea that all humanity would benefit from this special form of color blindness permeates the whole book…The result is a story with a high ethical purpose but no sermon.”—New York Times Book Review

“A taut tightly compressed story of endurance and revelation…At once barbed and tender, tense and fragile—as Timothy would say, ‘outrageous good.’”—Kirkus Reviews

* “Fully realized setting…artful, unobtrusive use of dialect…the representation of a hauntingly deep love, the poignancy of which is rarely achieved in children’s literature.”—School Library Journal, Starred

“Starkly dramatic, believable and compelling.”—Saturday Review

“A tense and moving experience in reading.”—Publishers Weekly

“Eloquently underscores the intrinsic brotherhood of man.”—Booklist

"This is one of the best survival stories since Robinson Crusoe."—The Washington Star

Callie Hayes is living a life of fear and disillusionment when she volunteers for a psychology experiment that promises to turn her life around. As her orientation proceeds, Callie becomes frightened by the secrecy and evasion she encounters. When she demands to be released from the program, she is suddenly dropped into a terrifying alien world and into a perilous battle between good and evil.

With limited resources and only a few cryptic words to guide her, Callie embarks on a life-changing journey. Will she decipher the plans the Benefactor has established for her escape, or will she succumb to the deception of the Arena?

When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition. As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love. As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history.

Within Cole Matthews lies anger, rage and hate. Cole has been stealing and fighting for years. This time he caught Peter Driscal in the parking lot and smashed his head against the sidewalk. Now, Peter may have permanent brain damage and Cole is in the biggest trouble of his life.

Cole is offered Circle Justice: a system based on Native American traditions that attempts to provide healing for the criminal offender, the victim, and the community. With prison as his only alternative, Cole plays along. He says he wants to repent, but in his heart, Cole blames his alcoholic mom, his abusive dad, wimpy Peter (everyone but himself) for his situation.

Cole receives a one-year banishment to a remote Alaskan island. There, he is mauled by a mysterious white bear of Native American legend. Hideously injured, Cole waits for death. His thoughts shift from anger to humility. To survive, he must stop blaming others and take responsibility for his life.

Rescuers arrive to save Cole's body, but it is the attack of the Spirit Bear that may save his soul.

Ben Mikaelsen paints a vivid picture of a juvenile offender, examining the roots of his anger without absolving him of responsibility for his actions, and questioning a society in which angry people make victims of their peers and communities. Touching Spirit Bear is a poignant testimonial to the power of a pain that can destroy, or lead to healing.

It's 18 years after the nuclear holocaust and the end of civilization, as we know it. Survivors are being relocated to a new society known as the Alliance. It seems like a dream come true for many of the new citizens.

Crime, as well as harmful emotions, such as anger and prejudice, have been eliminated, because the Alliance has computerized control over its citizens from a computer chip that has been implanted in everyone.

Eric Lloyd discovers the Alliance's corrupt power structure and vows to destroy it. But can one person change the world?

Witch Child is the spellbinding diary of a teenage girl who escapes persecution as a witch, only to face new intolerance in a Puritan settlement. Enter the world of young Mary Newbury, a world where simply being different can cost a person her life.

Hidden until now in the pages of her diary, Mary's startling story begins in 1659, the year her beloved grandmother is hanged in the public square as a witch. Mary narrowly escapes a similar fate, only to face intolerance and new danger among the Puritans in the New World. How long can she hide her true identity? Will she ever find a place where her healing powers will not be feared?

In April of 1994, the government of Rwanda called on everyone in the Hutu majority to kill everyone in the Tutsi minority. Over the next three months, 800,000 Tutsis were murdered in the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler's war against the Jews.

Philip Gourevitch's haunting work is an anatomy of the killings in Rwanda, a vivid history of the genocide's background, and an unforgettable account of what it means to survive in its aftermath.

Through intimate portraits of Rwandans in all walks of life, Gourevitch focuses on the psychological and political challenges of survival and on how the new leaders of postcolonial Africa went to war in the Congo when resurgent genocidal forces threatened to overrun central Africa.

Can a country composed largely of perpetrators and victims create a cohesive national society? This moving contribution to the literature of witness tells us much about the struggle everywhere to forge sane, habitable political orders, and about the stubbornness of the human spirit in a world of extremity.

Dirty Havana Trilogy is a gritty, powerful, and atmospheric novel-in-stories set against the backdrop of 1993 Cuba, during a time of confused, low-rent capitalism. The book is written from the semi-autobiographical point of view of Pedro Juan, a 40-year-old ex-radio journalist, who navigates the harsh realities of life in Havana.

Pedro Juan's existence is a struggle for survival, where "everything's worth something here." The stories unfold in a crumbling apartment building, depicting the stark realities of poverty, racism, violence, and prostitution. Yet, amidst the chaos, there is an unyielding quest for pleasure, for a sliver of happiness, no matter how warped the path may seem.

Written by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, a well-known member of the Latin American visual poetry movement, this book provides a raw portrayal of life in Havana. It offers a window into the lives of its colorful characters, who constantly strive to avoid defeat, embodying a manifesto against literary persecution. Dirty Havana Trilogy is a book that resonates with intellectual and emotional depth, lifting its characters from the muck and celebrating the indomitable human spirit.

Finding Fish is the remarkable memoir of Antwone Fisher's journey from abandonment and abuse to liberation, manhood, and extraordinary success.

Baby Boy Fisher was raised in institutions from birth, facing emotional abandonment and physical abuse. Despite these challenges, he refused to let his spirit be broken, nurturing a romantic heart and a wondrous imagination.

Fate brought him to the United States Navy, where he found a new family and became a man of the world. His journey continued as he worked as a federal correctional officer and a security guard at Sony Pictures, ultimately becoming one of Hollywood's most sought-after screenwriters.

In a tumultuous and gratifying tale of self-discovery, Antwone's story concludes with a return to Cleveland to unravel the mystery of his identity, connecting with his family.

Written in Fisher's gritty yet melodic literary voice, Finding Fish is an unforgettable reading experience.

Based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk, who survived alone for almost five years on an uninhabited island off the coast of Chile, The Mysterious Island is considered by many to be Jules Verne’s masterpiece. Here is the enthralling tale of five men and a dog who land in a balloon on a faraway, fantastic island of bewildering goings-on and their struggle to survive as they uncover the island’s secret.

Parable of the Talents is the Nebula Award-winning sequel to Parable of the Sower, continuing the gripping story of Lauren Olamina in a socially and economically depressed California in the 2030s.

Convinced that her community should colonize the stars, Lauren and her followers make preparations. However, the collapse of society and rise of fanatics result in Lauren's followers being enslaved, and her daughter stolen from her. Now, Lauren must fight back to save the new world order.

This novel explores themes of alienation and transcendence, violence and spirituality, slavery and freedom, and separation and community, to astonishing effect in the shockingly familiar, broken world of 2032.

In the year 1754, the stillness of Charlestown, New Hampshire, is shattered by the terrifying cries of an Indian raid. Young Miriam Willard, on a day that had promised new happiness, finds herself instead a captive on a forest trail, caught up in the ebb and flow of the French and Indian War.

It is a harrowing march north. Miriam can only force herself to the next stopping place, the next small portion of food, the next icy stream to be crossed. At the end of the trail waits a life of hard work and, perhaps, even a life of slavery. Mingled with her thoughts of Phineas Whitney, her sweetheart on his way to Harvard, is the crying of her sister’s baby, Captive, born on the trail.

Miriam and her companions finally reach Montreal, a city of shifting loyalties filled with the intrigue of war, and here, by a sudden twist of fortune, Miriam meets the prominent Du Quesne family, who introduce her to a life she has never imagined.

Based on an actual narrative diary published in 1807, Calico Captive skillfully reenacts an absorbing facet of history.

Forgotten Soldier recounts the horror of World War II on the eastern front, as seen through the eyes of a teenaged German soldier. At first an exciting adventure, young Guy Sajer’s war becomes, as the German invasion falters in the icy vastness of the Ukraine, a simple, desperate struggle for survival against cold, hunger, and above all the terrifying Soviet artillery.

As a member of the elite Gross Deutschland Division, he fought in all the great battles from Kursk to Kharkov. Sajer's German footsoldier’s perspective makes The Forgotten Soldier a unique war memoir, the book that the Christian Science Monitor said "may well be the book about World War II which has been so long awaited."

Now it has been handsomely republished containing fifty rare German combat photos of life and death at the eastern front. The photos of troops battling through snow, mud, burned villages, and rubble-strewn cities depict the hardships and destructiveness of war. Many are originally from the private collections of German soldiers and have never been published before. This volume is a deluxe edition of a true classic.

Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist, Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, a Tamil boy from Pondicherry, explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a boat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

With the startling emotional immediacy of a fractured family photo album, Jennifer Lauck's incandescent memoir is the story of an ordinary girl growing up at the turn of the 1970s and the truly extraordinary circumstances of a childhood lost.

Wrenching and unforgettable, Blackbird will carry your heart away.

To young Jenny, the house on Mary Street was home — the place where she was loved, a blue-sky world of Barbies, Bewitched, and the Beatles. Even her mother's pain from her mysterious illness could be patted away with powder and a kiss on the cheek.

But when everything that Jenny had come to rely on begins to crumble, an odyssey of loss, loneliness, and a child's will to survive takes flight...

The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things is a compelling collection of interconnected stories that explore the tumultuous life of a young boy named Jeremiah, who is on the run with his teenage mother, Sarah. When Sarah reclaims Jeremiah from his foster parents, he is thrust into a world of motels, truck stops, and the abusive, exploitative men Sarah encounters.

As Jeremiah navigates this harsh environment, he learns to survive and finds a way to love his mother, even as she spirals into drug-induced madness. The stories are told in spare, lyrical prose, rich with imagination and dark humor, transforming the savagery of Jeremiah's world into an unforgettable experience of compassion.

This special edition includes an additional seven stories, previously uncollected, by JT LeRoy, the literary persona of Laura Albert.

With its huge, scarred head halfway out of the water and its tail beating the ocean into a white-water wake more than forty feet across, the whale approached the ship at twice its original speed - at least six knots. With a tremendous cracking and splintering of oak, it struck the ship just beneath the anchor secured at the cat-head on the port bow...

In the Heart of the Sea brings to new life the incredible story of the wreck of the whaleship Essex - an event as mythic in its own century as the Titanic disaster in ours, and the inspiration for the climax of Moby-Dick. In a harrowing page-turner, Nathaniel Philbrick restores this epic story to its rightful place in American history.

In 1820, the 240-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, it was repeatedly rammed and sunk by an eighty-ton bull sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, made for the 3,000-mile-distant coast of South America in three tiny boats. During ninety days at sea under horrendous conditions, the survivors clung to life as one by one, they succumbed to hunger, thirst, disease, and fear.

Philbrick interweaves his account of this extraordinary ordeal of ordinary men with a wealth of whale lore and with a brilliantly detailed portrait of the lost, unique community of Nantucket whalers. Impeccably researched and beautifully told, the book delivers the ultimate portrait of man against nature, drawing on a remarkable range of archival and modern sources, including a long-lost account by the ship's cabin boy.

At once a literary companion and a page-turner that speaks to the same issues of class, race, and man's relationship to nature that permeate the works of Melville, In the Heart of the Sea will endure as a vital work of American history.

A harrowing, adrenaline-charged account of America's worst naval disaster — and of the heroism of the men who, against all odds, survived. Interweaving the stories of survivors, Doug Stanton has brought this astonishing human drama to life in a narrative that is at once immediate and timeless. The definitive account of a little-known chapter in World War II history, In Harm's Way is destined to become a classic tale of war, survival, and extraordinary courage.

On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed in the South Pacific by a Japanese submarine. An estimated 300 men were killed upon impact; close to 900 sailors were cast into the Pacific Ocean, where they remained undetected by the navy for nearly four days and nights. Battered by a savage sea, they struggled to stay alive, fighting off sharks, hypothermia, and dementia.

The captain's subsequent court-martial left many questions unanswered: How did the navy fail to realize the Indianapolis was missing? And perhaps most amazing of all, how did these 317 men manage to survive?

Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche is a powerful work of journalistic literature by the acclaimed author Haruki Murakami. On a clear spring day, Monday, March 20, 1995, five members of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo conducted a chemical warfare attack on the Tokyo subway system using sarin, a poison gas twenty-six times as deadly as cyanide.

The unthinkable had happened: a major urban transit system had become the target of a terrorist attack. In this compelling investigation, Murakami delves into the minds of those who lived through the catastrophe—from a Subway Authority employee dealing with survivor guilt, to a fashion salesman harboring more resentment towards the media than the perpetrators, to a young cult member who condemns the attack yet remains with Aum.

Through these diverse voices, Murakami exposes intriguing facets of the Japanese psyche. As he uncovers the fundamental issues leading to the attack, readers achieve a clear vision of an event that could occur anytime, anywhere. Hauntingly compelling and inescapably important, this book provides a profound insight into a tragic event on Japanese soil that reverberated around the world.

In 1959, Jean Craighead George published My Side of the Mountain. This coming-of-age story about a boy and his falcon went on to win a Newbery Honor, and for the past forty years has enthralled and entertained generations of would-be Sam Gribleys.

The two books that followed—On the Far Side of the Mountain and Frightful's Mountain—were equally extraordinary. Now all three books are available in one deluxe yet affordable volume for veteran devotees and brand-new fans alike.

Young Julie Harmon works “hard as a man,” they say, so hard that at times she's not sure she can stop. People depend on her to slaughter the hogs and nurse the dying. People are weak, and there is so much to do. At just seventeen, she marries and moves down into the valley of Gap Creek, where perhaps life will be better.

But Julie and Hank's new life in the valley, in the last years of the nineteenth century, is more complicated than the couple ever imagined. Sometimes it's hard to tell what to fear most—the fires and floods or the flesh-and-blood grifters, drunks, and busybodies who insinuate themselves into their new life. To survive, they must find out whether love can keep chaos and madness at bay.

Their struggles with nature, with work, with the changing century, and with the disappointments and triumphs of their union make Gap Creek a timeless story of a marriage.

Antarctica is the last unconquered continent, a murderous expanse of howling winds, blinding whiteouts, and deadly crevasses. On one edge of Antarctica is Wilkes Station. Beneath Wilkes Station lies the gate to hell itself...

A team of U.S. divers, exploring three thousand feet beneath the ice shelf, has vanished. Sending out an SOS, Wilkes draws a rapid deployment team of Marines—and someone else...

First comes a horrific firefight. Then comes a plunge into a drowning pool filled with killer whales. Next comes the hard part, as a handful of survivors begin an electrifying, red-hot, non-stop battle of survival across the continent and against wave after wave of elite military assassins—who've all come for one thing: a secret buried deep beneath the ice...

It's late summer 1793, and the streets of Philadelphia are abuzz with mosquitoes and rumors of fever. Down near the docks, many have taken ill, and the fatalities are mounting. Now they include Polly, the serving girl at the Cook Coffeehouse. But fourteen-year-old Mattie Cook doesn't get a moment to mourn the passing of her childhood playmate. New customers have overrun her family's coffee shop, located far from the mosquito-infested river, and Mattie's concerns of fever are all but overshadowed by dreams of growing her family's small business into a thriving enterprise. But when the fever begins to strike closer to home, Mattie's struggle to build a new life must give way to a new fight—the fight to stay alive.

In the year 1492, the Inquisition has all of Spain in its grip. After centuries of pogrom-like riots encouraged by the Church, the Jews—who have been an important part of Spanish life since the days of the Romans—are expelled from the country by royal edict.

Many who wish to remain are intimidated by Church and Crown and become Catholics, but several hundred thousand choose to retain their religion and depart; given little time to flee, some perish even before they can escape from Spain.

Yonah Toledano, the 15-year-old son of a celebrated Spanish silversmith, has seen his father and brother die during these terrible days—victims whose murders go almost unnoticed in a time of mass upheaval. Trapped in Spain by circumstances, he is determined to honor the memory of his family by remaining a Jew.

On a donkey named Moise, Yonah begins a meandering journey, a young fugitive zigzagging across the vastness of Spain. Toiling at manual labor, he desperately tries to cling to his memories of a vanished culture. As a lonely shepherd on a mountaintop he hurls snatches of almost forgotten Hebrew at the stars, as an apprentice armorer he learns to fight like a Christian knight.

Finally, as a man living in a time and land where danger from the Inquisition is everywhere, he deals with the questions that mark his past. How he discovers the answers, how he finds his way to a singular and strong Marrano woman, how he achieves a life with the outer persona of a respected Old Christian physician and the inner life of a secret Jew, is the fabric of this novel.

The Last Jew is a glimpse of the past, an authentic tale of high adventure, and a tender and unforgettable love story. In it, Noah Gordon utilizes his greatest strengths, and the result is remarkable and moving.

The Cruel Sea is a powerful novel set during World War II, chronicling the harrowing experiences of the British ships Compass Rose and Saltash as they engage in a desperate cat-and-mouse game with Nazi U-boats in the North Atlantic. Originally published in 1951, this classic novel vividly captures the endurance and daring of its characters.

The story is based on the author's own experiences serving in corvettes in the North Atlantic, providing a matter-of-fact yet moving portrayal of ordinary men learning to fight and survive amidst brutal conditions. The narrative spans seven chapters, each depicting a year of the war, offering gripping details of the Battle of the Atlantic and the relentless struggle against both the elements and a ruthless enemy.

The Cruel Sea remains a timeless piece of literature that conveys the raw courage and resilience of those who fought in one of history's most challenging naval battles.

"There is nothing imaginary about Junger's book; it is all terrifyingly, awesomely real." —Los Angeles Times

It was the storm of the century, boasting waves over one hundred feet high—a tempest created by so rare a combination of factors that meteorologists deemed it "the perfect storm." In a book that has become a classic, Sebastian Junger explores the history of the fishing industry, the science of storms, and the candid accounts of the people whose lives the storm touched. The Perfect Storm is a real-life thriller that makes us feel like we've been caught, helpless, in the grip of a force of nature beyond our understanding or control. Winner of the American Library Association's 1998 Alex Award.

The Voyage of the Narwhal is a captivating novel that draws on the experiences and discoveries of real expeditions to the Arctic. Set in the mid-nineteenth century, it captures the romance and peril of Arctic exploration.

Erasmus Darwin Wells is a naturalist aboard The Narwhal as it sails from the Delaware River to the Arctic with the goal of discovering the fate of the expedition of John Franklin, a real historical venture. The expedition is led by Zeke Voorhees, a childhood and family friend of Wells. As the journey unfolds, Wells embarks on an inner journey as a rift develops between himself and Voorhees.

Upon the Narwhal's arrival in Arctic waters, Voorhees begins the search for the lost expedition by exploring Arctic bays, sounds, and coastlines. As the Arctic winter approaches, the ship becomes barricaded by ice, and the challenge shifts to surviving the harsh winter. The men must not only endure the physical environment but also keep alive their spirit and determination to survive.

When spring and summer arrive and the ice begins to thaw, Voorhees treks inland alone, leaving Wells in charge of the Narwhal. When Voorhees fails to return, the crew persuades Wells to leave before winter sets in again. They retrofit a whale boat to navigate the frozen land towards open waters.

This novel is a vivid exploration of adventure, survival, and the intricate dynamics of human relationships amidst the unforgiving Arctic landscape.

When Michael is washed up on an island in the Pacific after falling from his parent's yacht, the Peggy Sue, he struggles to survive on his own. But he soon realizes there is someone close by, someone who is watching over him and helping him to stay alive.

Following a close-run battle between life and death after being stung by a poisonous jellyfish, the mysterious someone—Kensuke—allows Michael into his world and they become friends, teaching and learning from each other, until the day of separation becomes inevitable.

Morpurgo here spins a yarn which gently captures the adventurous elements one would expect from a desert-island tale, but the real strength lies in the poignant and subtle observations of friendship, trust and, ultimately, humanity. Beautifully illustrated by Michael Foreman, Kensuke's Kingdom is a stylish, deceptively simple and magical book that will effortlessly capture the heart and imagination of anyone who reads it.

A few months after the first fighter jets landed in their own backyard, Ellie and her five terrified but defiant friends struggle to survive amid a baffling conflict. Their families are unreachable; the mountains are now their home. When two of them fall behind enemy lines, Ellie knows what must happen next: a rescue mission.

Homer, the strongest and most unpredictable among them, is the one to take charge. While others have their doubts about his abilities, Homer has no choice but to prove them wrong - or risk losing everything to the enemy.

Experience one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age in this New York Times bestseller: the harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole. In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance and set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization. With an introduction by Nathaniel Philbrick, Endurance is the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip. Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the gripping and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age.

What is death all about? What is life all about? So wonders thirteen-year-old Elli Friedmann as she fights for her life in a Nazi concentration camp. It wasn’t long ago that Elli led a normal life that included family, friends, school, and thoughts about boys. A life in which Elli could lie and daydream for hours that she was a beautiful and elegant celebrated poet.

But these adolescent daydreams quickly darken in March 1944, when the Nazis invade Hungary. First, Elli can no longer attend school, have possessions, or talk to her neighbors. Then, she and her family are forced to leave their house behind to move into a crowded ghetto, where privacy becomes a luxury of the past and food becomes a scarcity.

Her strong will and faith allow Elli to manage and adjust, but what she doesn’t know is that this is only the beginning. The worst is yet to come...

WARSAW 1942

On a cold, dark night in Warsaw in 1942, the Balicki children watch in horror as Nazi Storm Troopers arrest their mother. Now they are alone. With the war raging around them, food and shelter are hard to come by. They live in constant fear.

Finally, they get word that their father is alive. He has made it to Switzerland. Edek and Ruth are determined to find him, though they know how dangerous the long trip from Warsaw will be. But they also know that if they don't make it, they may never see their parents again.

Their gripping story is taken from actual accounts.

In August 1914, days before the outbreak of the First World War, the renowned explorer Ernest Shackleton and a crew of twenty-seven set sail for the South Atlantic in pursuit of the last unclaimed prize in the history of exploration: the first crossing on foot of the Antarctic continent. Weaving a treacherous path through the freezing Weddell Sea, they had come within eighty-five miles of their destination when their ship, Endurance, was trapped fast in the ice pack. Soon the ship was crushed like matchwood, leaving the crew stranded on the floes.

Their ordeal would last for twenty months, and they would make two near-fatal attempts to escape by open boat before their final rescue. Drawing upon previously unavailable sources, Caroline Alexander gives us a riveting account of Shackleton's expedition—one of history's greatest epics of survival. And she presents the astonishing work of Frank Hurley, the Australian photographer whose visual record of the adventure has never before been published comprehensively.

Together, text and image re-create the terrible beauty of Antarctica, the awful destruction of the ship, and the crew's heroic daily struggle to stay alive, a miracle achieved largely through Shackleton's inspiring leadership. The survival of Hurley's remarkable images is scarcely less miraculous: The original glass plate negatives, from which most of the book's illustrations are superbly reproduced, were stored in hermetically sealed canisters that survived months on the ice floes, a week in an open boat on the polar seas, and several more months buried in the snows of a rocky outcrop called Elephant Island. Finally, Hurley was forced to abandon his professional equipment; he captured some of the most unforgettable images of the struggle with a pocket camera and three rolls of Kodak film.

The Endurance thrillingly recounts one of the last great adventures in the Heroic Age of exploration—perhaps the greatest of them all.

In the far distant future, the country is laid waste by a nuclear holocaust. Twelve-year-old Riddley Walker tells his story in a language as fractured as the world in which he lives. As Riddley steps outside the confines of his small world, he finds himself caught up in intrigue and a frantic quest for power, desperately trying to make sense of things.

Set in a remote future in a post-nuclear holocaust England (Inland), Hoban has imagined a humanity regressed to an iron-age, semi-literate state—and invented a language to represent it. Riddley is at once the Huck Finn and the Stephen Dedalus of his culture—rebel, change agent, and artist.

This is a brilliant, unique, completely realized work of fiction. One reads it again and again, discovering new wonders every time through. Join Riddley Walker on his journey of discovery and survival in a world that echoes both the past and a possible future.