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A stirring tribute to America’s mightiest river by one of its greatest authors

Before Samuel Clemens became Mark Twain, world-famous satirist and the acclaimed creator of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, he trained to be a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River.

In this captivating memoir and travelogue, Twain recounts his apprenticeship under legendary captain Horace Bixby, an exacting mentor who teaches his charge how to navigate the ever-changing waterway. The colorful details of life on the river—from the reversals of fortune suffered by riverboat gamblers to the feuds waged by towns seeking to profit from the steamboat trade—fascinate Twain, and in his hands become the stuff of legend. 

Years later, as a passenger on a voyage from St. Louis to New Orleans, he vividly describes the stunning changes wrought by the Civil War and the steady advance of the railroads.

The author who helped to shape the modern biography turned his glorious prose and searing wit to one of the most famous romances in British history, that of Queen Elizabeth I and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. As the San Francisco Chronicle raved, “Elizabeth is an old subject, but here is a fresh and brilliant portrait of her, a splendidly dramatic story, an historical excursion of uncommon interest.”

In these pages, Lytton Strachey follows the twists and turns of the uncommon affair. The stepson of the Earl of Leicester, the Queen’s favorite, Robert was not yet twenty when he captured the fifty-three-year-old monarch’s interest. 

Their tumultuous relationship survived international intrigue, political machinations, and even the young Earl’s marriage. But it was only a matter of time before his ambition would clash with the capricious Queen, bringing about his untimely end.

This biography “is penetrating and true. It is not only Mr. Strachey’s best book; it is a great book” (New-York Evening Post).

The Revolutionary War colonel—and leader of the famed Culper Spy Ring—tells his story in this fascinating historical autobiography.

When British troops defeated the Continental Army on Long Island, General George Washington was forced to abandon New York in order to save the revolution. The British established their headquarters in New York City—beginning an occupation that would last the length of the war.

Priceless intelligence flowed through the city’s harbor, and Washington wanted to claim it as his own. To Benjamin Tallmadge, a young officer of the Continental Army, the general assigned an impossible mission: Infiltrate New York, establish a spy network, and report everything the British know.

Throughout the war, Tallmadge and his spies collected intelligence on troop movements, sneak attacks, and the treachery of Benedict Arnold. Nearly two and a half centuries later, the heroic exploits of the Culper Spy Ring have served as the inspiration for the acclaimed TV series Turn: Washington’s Spies and the video game Assassin’s Creed III. 

In this lively and engaging memoir, the days of revolution are remembered by a patriot who fought in the shadows—and helped redefine the nature of espionage.

This “warmly delightful, vigorously affirmative” memoir of a woman homesteader in early 20th-century Wyoming inspired the acclaimed film Heartland (The Wall Street Journal).

In 1909, Elinore Pruitt answered an ad in the Denver Post to become Henry Clyde Stewart’s housekeeper on his homestead outside Burntfork, Wyoming. Elinore soon fell in love with the land’s vast, untamed beauty, and filed a claim for her own adjoining property under the Homestead Act. Over the next five years, she not only made a home for herself, but traveled extensively across the state, befriending every neighbor within a hundred miles.

Through it all—weddings and births, illnesses and snowstorms, changing seasons and changing times—Elinore maintained correspondence with her former employer Juliet Coney in Denver, Colorado. In vivid detail and with lively prose, Elinore told Juliet of life as a woman in the American West. 

First published in the Atlantic Monthly, these letters made their author an American icon of her time.