Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Action & Adventure

The complete career of the immaculate Psmith! First, as a fellow lost lamb with cricket prodigy Mike Jackson at Sedleigh school; then shaking up the world of commerce in his genial efforts to reform boorish bank manager Mr. Bickersdyke; and later converting twee family periodical "Cosy Moments" into a crusading yellow journal, in pursuit of the bashful owner of New York's notorious Pleasant Street tenements. And finally following distressed damsel Eve to Blandings Castle—the seat of fluffy-minded peer Lord Emsworth—in the guise of an absconded Canadian poet.

"The Wood Beyond the World" is perhaps the first modern fantasy novel to unite an imaginary world with the element of the supernatural and is thus the precursor of much of present-day fantasy literature. The protagonist, (Golden Walter), gets married when he is a young man. His wife betrays him with another, so in his sorrow and to avoid a feud with her family, he sets off to sea.

The only survivors of a shipwreck off a Pacific island are Cambridge professor Edward Bowden and an orphaned baby girl. When Valentine Ryven is discovered 20 years later, Edward has recently died, and she is relieved and excited to be taken to England, where she believes her loving family awaits. Valentine is sure of a warm welcome because among the papers retrieved from the wreck is a letter from her Aunt Helena saying so. But in 20 years things change ... especially when money is involved.

In The Thirty-Nine Steps, Hannay struggles to thwart an assassination plot designed to hasten war between Britain and Germany. Later he is plucked from the trenches first, in Greenmantle, to frustrate a plot to ferment an uprising in the Islamic world; and then, in Mr. Standfast, to undertake a vital secret mission against a German spy ring operating among pacifist elements in England. After the war, his adventures continue in The Three Hostages; and then in The Island of Sheep, when an old oath to protect the son of a friend from his days in Africa draws him into new danger.

A Doll's House, published in 1879, was the earliest of Ibsen's "social dramas", and the first of his works to attract attention outside of Scandinavia. The central theme of the play is a woman's right to individual self-development, and represents, as humourist Stephen Leacock observed of many Ibsen plays, "a profound problem stated but not solved".

Transport yourself back in time to 1920s England and meet the delightful young duo Tommy and Tuppence. They exude a zest for life and hunger for work in post war Britain. Rebranding themselves as The Young Adventurers Ltd., they are promptly hired to embark on their first mystery—Where is Jane Finn? This is not your typical "whodunnit" as we encounter international espionage, abduction, a mysterious death and meet plenty of colourful characters on the way. Only Tommy and Tuppence can decide who they really trust as they navigate the various plot twists and turns.

Norman Gilligan provides just the right amount of British accent narrating The Time Machine, a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells, published in 1895. Wells is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposefully and selectively. The term time machine, coined by Wells, is now universally used to refer to such a vehicle.

A space portal to remote colonies held by Earth is captured by a hostile species, which wants to place a toll on it. While authorities on Earth and considering whether to wage war, they manage to capture an alien spaceship, and hand it over to a group of scientists for military research. Will the scientists succeed in discovering any secrets that will give humanity the upper hand in the impending conflict?

The notorious pirate Captain Flint is dead, and his great horde of stolen treasure lies lost, stashed and buried on an island far, far away. Jim Hawkins, the humble son of a country innkeeper, comes into possession of the only map to Flint's treasure and is soon swept away on a high seas adventure of treachery and survival.

When on Pru'ut, you must do as the natives do—and that includes dying as they do! Finding himself trapped on a planet inhabited by an unfriendly species, Earthman James Grady is searching for an ingenious way to escape execution resulting from his breaking a local taboo.

Yorkan Varr was exiled to the prison planet for a crime he knew he had never committed. Oddly, the man who had sent him there was a prisoner too!

Under the double moons of Barsoom, an invisible flier sped to the mysterious city of Jahar where Sanoma Tora, the kidnapped princess of Helium, had been taken. Hadron of Hastor was at the controls, hatching a rescue plan that required unusual daring and great ingenuity. For invisibility alone was not a great enough weapon against "The Death." And should Hadron succeed, what fate would await him at the hands of the madman whose very genius had created the means of that rescue?

Giant Spiders. Death Ray Guns. Personal Flyers. Cannibals. Sword Fights. From the fertile mind of Edgar Rice Burroughs comes the tale of A Fighting Man of Mars. Hadron of Hastor sets out to rescue a lovely kidnapped woman he believes he is in love with. Along the way, his adventures among the little-known ancient cities of Mars, his comradeship with a brave warrior-woman named Tavia, and their struggle together against the hordes of a cunning monarch, make for an exciting classic science fiction adventure.

"Masterman Ready, or the Wreck of the Pacific" by Capt. Frederick Marryat, follows the adventures of a devoutly Christian family (The Seagraves) and their servant (Juno) who are shipwrecked at sea and find themselves having to survive on a desert island.

"Mr. Midshipman Easy" (1836) is mostly a humorous, sometimes ironic, satirical, seafaring adventure. However, the early chapters of the novel address the birth, upbringing, and education of "our Hero", Jack Easy, and set the stage for the rest of the book.

In this, the second book of Burroughs' Amtor series, Napier travels over perilous mountains and through forests, inhabited by creatures more terrifying than any nightmare, in search of the lovely princess Duare, who has been snatched from his arms. In the Room of the Seven Doors, Napier faces the choice of his life. Six doors led to terrible deaths—the seventh is the door to life. But for him, this door too leads only to new dangers on a planet whose beasts and men are more frightful than any that stalk his native Earth.

When the hard-won peace of the primitive Empire of Pellucidar is shattered by the invasion of the fierce Korsar sea-rovers, Emperor David Innes sends his caveman horde to battle. One of the bravest of his club-swinging warriors is Tanar the Fleet One. Despite the strange weapons of the invaders, David and his skin-clad band thrust back the Korsars and force them to flee in their ships--but with them they take several captives, including Tanar. But the bronzed warrior from the kingdom of Sari is no easy prisoner to keep.

Peter LeFroy is fifteen years old, but the tales are anything but adolescent tales. They are hardened sailor tales complete with life and death at every turn. On his adventure, Peter becomes a Pirate—against his will; lives with some Eskimos—who save his life; lives through on-board fires, iceberg disasters, brutal whale hunting, and falls in love with a young girl named Mary. This book is about courage and perseverance. It was one of the first in the YA genre from England and was published the same year as Melville’s Moby Dick.

Ulysses Paxton, mortally wounded on the battlefields of WWI France, is transported to the planet of his dreams, Barsoom (Mars). There he becomes the assistant of the Master Mind of Mars, Ras Thavas, a medical genius. Burroughs anticipated such modern marvels as organ and limb transplants, exploding bullets, anti-grav fliers, and some we haven’t yet invented! When Ras Thavas switches the brains of an evil and wizened Jeddara (queen) into the body of a gorgeous young woman, our hero vows to right the wrong. Swords and sci-fi action abound in this sixth of ERB’s Mars series.

Here, it was almost inevitable that this subject would attract the interest of H.G Wells in the batch of sci-fi novels that he wrote between 1895 and 1901. In Well's story, the vehicle is not a balloon, as in many of the previous accounts, but a sphere made of a mysterious substance, named "cavorite" after its inventor, Cavor, who accompanies the narrator, Bedford, on the trek to the moon. The ascent is made possible by the fact the "cavorite" is, in Well's words, "transparent to gravity."