Mark Twain

The classic story of a boy who makes his own rules and the small Missouri town where he and his friends experience the adventures of a lifetime. Filled with schoolyard pranks, buried treasures, spooky caves, secret gangs, and grave robbers, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is entertainment of the highest order. The clever schemes of its eponymous hero--from tricking his friends into completing his chores to sneaking into his own funeral--are the stuff...

Mark Twain's darkly comic short classic set in the antebellum South stands as a literary condemnation of slavery and racial inequality. Each enriched classic edition includes: A concise introduction that gives readers important background information. A chronology of the author's life and work. A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context. An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations....

These acerbic, poignant, and thought-provoking essays concern mankind, its relationship with God, and how the mind works. Twain himself considered them dark and cynical, delaying their publication for many years before finally releasing them as an anonymous, limited-edition collection. The title essay constitutes a deeply felt blow against religious hypocrisy, written in the form of a Socratic dialogue between a young idealist and an elderly, world-weary...

While Hank Morgan, Twain's time-displaced Yankee traveller, keeps up a steady stream of flippancies, founding the first tabloid, the Camelot Weekly Hosannah and Literary Volcano, and organizing a game of baseball between armour-clad knights, he also keeps up a steady commentary on the social mores of King Arthur's court, criticizing the hereditary social classes and state church still strong in the Victorian England of Twain's own day, and championing...

First published in the 1905 edition of "Harper's Bazaar", "Eve's Diary" is a short story written by Mark Twain. Presented in the style of a diary, it recounts the experiences of Eve including her time in the Garden of Eden and her expulsion with Adam. A lovely short comical tale of which is believed to have been a posthumous love letter to Twain's wife. Illustrated beautifully by Lester Ralph. Contents include: "Eve's Diary", "Extract from Adam's...

"Upon the border of a remote and out-of-the-way village in south-western Missouri lived an old farmer named John Gray. . . ."In 1876, the same year The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published, Mark Twain wrote a story for The Atlantic Monthly. He meant it as a "blind novelette"a challenge to other writers to submit their own ending of the story in a national competition. Twain asked his editor at The Atlantic to request submissions from leading authors...

An abridged version of the adventures of a nineteenth-century boy and a runaway slave as they float down the Mississippi River on a raft.