Stefan Rudnicki

In seafaring literature, no fictional sailor's story can match this true, real-life adventure. Before the Wind is the memoir of early nineteenth-century sea captain Charles Tyng- from his childhood and love affair with the sea to his rise through the ranks to captain and ship owner in the tea and sugar trade. Before the Wind takes listeners on a trip around the world- from visits to Lord Byron in Italy and King Kamehameha in Hawaii to Napoleon's prison...

The Bailey Flanigan series begins with Bailey leaving Bloomington for the adventure of a lifetime. She has won an audition for the ensemble of a Broadway musical in New York City. She's determined to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but is she really ready to leave family and friends for the loneliness of the city? And what of Cody? His disappearance has her worried about their future and praying that their love can survive....

Milt Dale, man of the forest, halted at the edge of a timbered ridge, to listen and to watch. Beneath him lay a narrow valley, open and grassy, from which rose a faint murmur of running water. Its music was pierced by the wild staccato yelp of a hunting coyote. From overhead in the giant fir came a twittering and rustling of grouse settling for the night; and from across the valley drifted the last low calls of wild turkeys going to roost. To Dale's...

Peter Willems is down on his luck. The Dutch clerk has been fired for embezzlement from his job in the Indonesian port city of Makassar, and his scornful wife has abandoned him. Willems' despair lifts after an encounter with Tom Lingard, a sea captain who operates a remote trading post. Lingard hires the drifter to act as his agent, entrusting Willems with knowledge of the secret route across dangerous waters to the post. Once installed in his new...

Herland (1915) is a utopian novel by American author and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Herland was originally published in The Forerunner, a monthly magazine edited by Gilman, before going out of print for the next several decades. The novel was republished with an influential introduction by scholar Ann J. Lane in 1979 and has since been recognized as an important work of science fiction written by a leading feminist of the early twentieth century. A...

A novel of naval life in Napoleonic France. After forty years of piracy on Eastern seas, Citizen Peyrol returns to his native France, a country now ravaged and scarred by revolution and war. Looking for peace in which to end his days, he withdraws to a safe harbor in a remote farmhouse on Escampobar Peninsula, which looks out to the distant Mediterranean, where the lovely Arlette lives with her aunt and the revolutionary Scevola. But the arrival of...

Barnstaple, a burnt out journalist, decides to go on holiday and leave the rat race behind. He leaves his family at home and hits the road. His car along with several others are miraculous transported 3,000 years into an alternate future. The world he lands in, a veritable utopia, has a history very much like his own but for small details. Mankind has left behind its governments and religions for good or ill. Each person lives a life of their own...

Witness a chilling tale of ambition and creation gone awry. Dr. Victor Frankenstein, driven by a thirst for knowledge, assembles a grotesque creature from stolen body parts. Horrified by his creation, he abandons it, setting off a chain of tragic events. The lonely and misunderstood creature seeks revenge on its creator, unleashing a haunting battle between man and monster. Shelley's masterpiece delves into themes of ethics, identity, and the consequences...

Alvina Houghton is bored by her little town, and feels trapped after her plans to elope with her lover falls through. Though she had previously dreamed of training as a nurse, Alvina is unsure what to do with her life. Alvina comes of age as her father, James, faces the failure of his business. She has a difficult relationship with her father. He is a man who never fully indulged in his passions, but has made eccentric financial decisions. In attempt...