The first and most autobiographical of Maugham's masterpieces. It is the story of Philip Carey, an orphan eager for life, love and adventure. After a few months studying in Heidelberg, and a brief spell in Paris as a would-be artist, he settles in London to train as a doctor where he meets Mildred, the loud but irresistible waitress with whom he plunges into a tortured and masochistic affair.

Augustus Tomlin was found floating in the waters of the Florida Keys as an infant after a mysterious undersea explosion. Not long after turning sixteen, following an attack by creatures right out of a nightmare near his adoptive parents' seaside cabin, he is pulled away from the only family he has ever known back into the one thing that scares him the most – the ocean.Augie reluctantly follows his new friend Mira and her drac to the centuries old underwater city of Grim's Peak where he must overcome his overwhelming phobia of water and adapt to his new surroundings quickly because it is clear that someone is hell bent on trying to kill him. The only clue he has to his origins is the small medallion he was wearing on the night he was found. Augie's quest for the truth about who he is and what happened to his parents leads him and his friends to secret underground caverns, a dead undersea lake called the Hel-mir, and to several encounters with a dangerous species of half-human/half-fish hybrids called Mers who will seemingly stop at nothing to reclaim the territory now occupied by Grim's Peak that they say was stolen from them by the town's founders almost a thousand years ago. It isn't long before Augie discovers he is part of a centuries old mystery that began with a single lie - a lie so powerful that were it to ever be exposed it would bring everything crashing down around him including the amazing new world he has been introduced to. Time is running out, and to uncover the truth Augie must face earth shattering revelations about his past, survive against incredible odds, and discover the identity of the traitor in his midst who has been living right under his nose all along.

Anyone who has read J.D. Salinger's New Yorker stories, particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esme--With Love and Squalor, will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is full of children. The hero-narrator of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices--but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.

Beginning in the fictional seaport of Bideford Quay in Devon, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Charles Kingsley's monumental novel follows the fortunes of Amyas Leigh, a young man who sets sail on a life of adventure on the high seas. After battling pirates and treasure-hunting in the Caribbean, and setting out to rescue his beloved Rose Salterne, Amyas joins Sir Francis Drake as he prepares to face England's greatest threat—the Spanish Armada. Packed with drama, excitement and romance Westward Ho! is a magnificent celebration of an age of exploration, discovery and conquest. More than this, however, the novel also draws parallels between Elizabethan England and mid-nineteenth century Britain, when many feared imminent invasion by the French under their Catholic emperor Louis Napoleon. Included is an insightful introduction by historical writer Malcolm Day.