Set before the First World War, this enthralling novel pits two amateur sailors-cum-sleuths against the secret forces of mighty Germany. This spy thriller raised a lot of commotion when first published in 1903 (the year of Sherlock Holmes's retirement). Indeed, it spawned a whole genre. It is a first-person tale of stereotypical young Englishmen on the scent of German spies in the North Sea. This is all very conventional Edwardian fare except for the loving details of yachting and the prophetic hint of German imperial ambition.

Many chronicles have been written about life at sea, but few, if any, can compare with Joseph Conrad's masterpiece. It is the story of one unremarkable steamship captain, pitted against a storm of incredible fury. Captain Macwhirr has a reputation as a solid, steadfast man, who "having just enough imagination to carry him through each successive day, and no more" cannot fully believe any storm would be a match for his powerful ship.

Jim is a young, good-looking, genial, and naive water-clerk on the Patna, a cargo ship plying Asian waters. He harbors romantic fantasies of adventure and heroism - which are promptly scuttled one night when the ship collides with an obstacle and begins to sink. Acting on impulse, Jim jumps overboard and lands in a lifeboat, which happens to be bearing the unscrupulous captain and his cohorts away from the disaster. The Patna, however, manages to stay afloat. The foundering vessel is towed into port - and since the officers have strategically vanished, Jim is left to stand trial for abandoning the ship and its 800 passengers.

Daniel DeFoe

Daniel Defoe relates the tale of an English sailor marooned on a desert island for nearly three decades. An ordinary man struggling to survive in extraordinary circumstances, Robinson Crusoe wrestles with fate and the nature of God.

The hero of the novel, Edmond Dantes, is a young sailor who is unjustly accused of aiding the exiled Napoleon. As punishment he is sentenced to life imprisonment in a French island fortress. After 14 years, Dantes makes a daring escape by taking the place of a dead companion; he is sewn into a burial shroud and thrown into the sea...

This is the 1st book in The Horatio Hornblower Series.

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Horatio Hornblower Series

Images of Bogart and Hepburn only enhance the tale of this unlikely pair during their determined assault against the Germans.

The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal - a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from loss.

Follows the tale of Odysseus as he is returning from the Trojan war, but somehow gets lost at sea in strange and mystic lands.

"The story starts with a gentleman, a Mr. Humphrey Van Weyden taking a nice cruise on San Francisco Bay. All of but a moment, a simple twist of fate changes his life forever. The large ferry-boat he was on, the Martinez was suddenly struck by a steamboat in the dense and sometimes deadly San Francisco fog. As he was floating through the water he is picked up by the schooner Ghost whose captain is known infamously for his cruelty, Wolf Larsen. Soon he is thrust into a world of hard labor and death waiting around the corner always." - A reader

One of London's lesser-known works, this collection of eight short stories concerns the adventures of Capt. David Grief. In his South Pacific travels, Grief encounters exploitative natives, pirates, and colonists.

This edition of his masterwork includes the full text along with illustrations of whales, whaling barks, and whaling instruments; maps; and a new introduction by Nathaniel Philbrick.

If Melville had never written Moby Dick, his place in world literature would be assured by his short tales. "Billy Budd, Sailor," his last work, is the masterpiece in which he delivers the final summation in his "quarrel with God." It is a brilliant study of the tragic clash between social authority and individual freedom, human justice and abstract good.

This first volume of The Library of America's complete prose works of Herman Melville includes three romances of the South Seas. "Typee" and "Omoo," based on the young Melville's experiences on a whaling ship, are exuberant accounts of the idyllic life among the "cannibals" in Polynesia. They remained his most popular works well into the 20th century. "Mardi" ("the world" in Polynesian) is a mixture of love story, adventure, and political allegory, set on a mythical Pacific island

The most stirring sea adventure ever told - the historic voyage of the H.M.S. Bounty that culminated in Fletcher Christian's mutiny against Captain Bligh. An unforgettable yarn of the high seas.

This is the 1st book in The Aubrey-Maturin Series.

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Aubrey-Maturin Series

Ramsome's ageless children's masterpiece. Set in The English Lake district between the wars, the books tell of the adventures of a group of children unbound by parental restrictions. Aboard the Swallow, John, Susan, Titty and Roger find themselves under attack from the fierce Amazon Pirates, Nancy and Peggy.

Climb aboard for the swashbuckling adventure of a lifetime. Treasure Island has enthralled for decades. The names Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins are destined to remain pieces of folklore for as long as children want to read Robert Louis Stevenson's most famous book. With it's dastardly plot and motley crew of rogues and villains, it seems unlikely that children will ever say no to this timeless classic.

Twain's classic tale of high jinx on the banks of the Mississippi has it all: mischievous boys, robbers, buried treasure, and a graveyard at midnight. Not to mention the irresistible title character and his adventurous sidekick, Huckleberry Finn.

Mark Twain's classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, tells the story of a teenaged misfit who finds himself floating on a raft down the Mississippi River with an escaping slave, Jim. In the course of their perilous journey, Huck and Jim meet adventure, danger, and a cast of characters who are sometimes menacing and often hilarious. 

Professor Arronax and his servant Conseil board a U. S. ship that is searching for a monster that has sunk a number of other ships. They discover that it isn't a monster at all but a submarine, captained by a mysterious man known only as Nemo. Arronax, Conseil, and an American harpooner named Ned Land travel with Nemo and see many wondrous things and have many adventures.