Bent Northrop Memorial Library

This masterly character study of human transformation, written by Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) during the First World War, chronicles a youth's passage into manhood upon becoming the commander of his first ship. In this poignant tale of maturation, Conrad explores the initiation of this transitional occurrence and delivers a portrait of physical and psychic exile; sensory disorientation; and the final crossover toward a new identity. With realism born...

Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts by Frank Richard Stockton is an excellently written, captivating history book dedicated to young readers about how pirating began and how it evolved during the 17th and 18th century. The terms buccaneer and pirate are nowadays used as interchangeable, but as a matter of fact buccaneers were a group of pirates active in the Caribbean and attacking only Spanish ships and are therefore considered to be the predecessors...

The Grain Ship (1914) is a collection of short stories by Morgan Roberston. Published a year before the author's death, The Grain Ship compiles works of short fiction originally published in Harper's Monthly, New Story Magazine, and The Sunday Magazine. The ten stories of The Grain Ship showcase Robertson's skill for yarn-spinning while benefitting from his experience as a merchant sailor. Dining alone at an upscale restaurant, an old sailor overhears...

Shares expert guidelines on how to read and appreciate Herman Melville's classic work, offering insight into its history, characters, and themes while explaining its literary relevance in the modern world.

Retellings of twenty of Shakespeare's best known plays, using the playwright's own words when possible.

"Jared Kane is a West Coast commercial fisherman whose life has been plagued by bad luck and blackout drinking. Once he inherits Arrow, an old forty-six-foot wooden sailboat, Jared begins to see a chance for redemption. With his friend from prison, Danny MacLean, Jared plans an offshore voyage, sailing from Vancouver, British Columbia, down the Pacific Coast to California and out into the South Pacific. But that bad luck rears its ugly head: Danny...

The Rescue, A Romance of the Shallows (1920) is one of Joseph Conrad's works contained in what is now sometimes called the Lingard Trilogy, a group of novels based on Conrad's experience as mate on the steamer Vidar. Although it was the last of the three novels to be published, after Almayer's Folly (1895) and An Outcast of the Islands (1896), the events related in the novel precede those. The story follows Captain Tom Lingard, the recurring protagonist...

"Wooden sailboats shouldn't play with steel yachts. When his lover's sister is the latest victim in a series of sadistic assaults, Jared Kane sets out to find the guilty party. His search leads him into a tangled network of sex, power, and religion connecting high political office in the city to a secretive sect in the B.C. wilderness. The crimes seem connected to an exclusive yacht club in Vancouver's West End, where Jared is able to moor his old...

Finding love is hard, even when you aren't a mutant.
Like most seventeen-year-olds, Piper Dunn wants to blend in with the crowd. Having a blowhole is a definite handicap. A product of a lab-engineered mother with dolphin DNA, Piper spends her school days hiding her brilliant ocean-colored eyes and sea siren voice behind baggy clothing and ugly glasses. When Tyler, the new boy in school, zeroes in on her, ignoring every other girl vying for his...

White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War is the fifth book by American writer Herman Melville, first published in London in 1850. The book is based on the author's fourteen months' service in the United States Navy, aboard the frigate USS Neversink (actually USS United States). The novel takes its title from the outer garment that the eponymous main character fashions for himself on board ship, with materials at hand, being in need of a coat sufficient...