What Is Man? appears in the form of a Socratic dialogue between a romantic young idealist and an elderly cynic, who debate issues of mankind, such as whether man is free to act or is more of a machine, whether personal merit is meaningless given how the environment shapes us, and whether man truly has impulses other than to pursue pleasure and avoid pain.

Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are saved from a crippling bout of spring fever when Aunt Sally writes and asks them to come to visit the family in Arkansas. As they set out on the steamboat downriver, though, Tom and Huck find themselves in yet another whirlwind adventure tracking down criminals and stolen diamonds, all to save the life of their beloved Uncle Silas.

This book is part memoir, part philosophical text, part study in human behavior, from one of America's greatest literary treasures. Narrated masterfully by Bronson Pinchot, this audiobook also includes Twain’s popular short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County".

This is the story of Mark Twain's brief career as a Confederate soldier at the beginning of the American Civil War. Mark Twain's "private history" is told from the viewpoint of "someone who set out to do something in the war, but didn't". What starts out as a kind of class reunion/camping trip quickly becomes a series of frightful near misses with a determined and deadly foe, and ends in painful, premature death for some and a lifetime of guilty regrets for others.

The Gilded Age is the collaborative work of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirized the era that followed the Civil War. This period is often referred to as the “Gilded Age” because of this book. The corruption and greed that was typical of the time is exemplified through two fictional narratives: one, of the Hawkins, a poor family from Tennessee that tries to persuade the government to purchase their seventy-five thousand acres of unimproved land.

Here we see Twain on a somewhat personal level. Penniless and having just lost his wife and one of his children, Twain turns to writing about God, Christianity, and the many curious natures of man. This collection was so controversial that his daughter prohibited its publication until 52 years after his death.

In 1852, young Walt Whitman - a down-on-his-luck housebuilder in Brooklyn - was hard at work writing two books. One would become one of the most famous volumes of poetry in American history, a free-verse revelation beloved the world over, Leaves of Grass. The other, a novel, would be published under a pseudonym and serialized in a newspaper. A short, rollicking story of orphanhood, avarice, and adventure in New York City, Life and Adventures of Jack Engle appeared to little fanfare. Then it disappeared.

George Horace Lorimer was an American journalist and author. He is best known as the editor of The Saturday Evening Post. During his editorial reign, the Post rose from a circulation of several thousand to over a million. He is credited with promoting or discovering a large number of American writers, e.g. Jack London. Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son has been widely praised and is full of timeless advice everyone can learn from.

In Letters of Note: Dogs, Shaun Usher brings together a delightful collection of correspondence about our canine friends, featuring affectionate accounts of pups’ playful misdemeanours, heartfelt tributes to loyal fidos and shared tales of remarkable hounds. 

Actor Vincent Price won acclaim for his performances as a menacing villain in dozens of macabre horror films, such as House of Wax. Less well known, though, is Price's lifelong love of animals, especially his 14-year-old mutt, Joe. From his wife's passion for poodles to film set encounters with all types of creatures, including goats, apes, and camels, Price's life was full of furry, four-legged friends.

The problem was that Les Darcy didn't want to march at the fore of such a procession, nor to such a destination. He wanted to continue what he had been doing to extraordinary acclaim before the war began - taking on the best boxers the world could throw at him, and lifting his entire family out of poverty as he did so. Torn between the duty he felt he owed his family, and the duty many felt he owed his country, Les made his choice ... and faced the consequences.

A horse trainer fears his master, Sir Robert Nortberton, has gone mad, and comes to Sherlock Holmes for help. Holmes and Watson swiftly discover that a horrible secret lurks in the shadows of Shoscombe. The last of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes short stories is brought vividly to life by Robert Hardy, known to many for playing Cornelius Fudge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Two adventurers approach a journalist looking for help, they want plans, maps, and information about the mysterious Kafiristan. They have an audacious plan to carve themselves a kingdom in its mountainous terrain. Two men, versus an entire nation.

The best-selling author of Truman and John Adams, David McCullough has written profiles of exceptional men and women past and present who have not only shaped the course of history or changed how we see the world but whose stories express much that is timeless about the human condition. Here are Alexander von Humboldt, whose epic explorations of South America surpassed the Lewis and Clark expedition; Harriet Beecher Stowe, "the little woman who made the big war”....

This treasured historical satire, played out in two very different socioeconomic worlds of 16th-century England, centers around the lives of two boys born in London on the same day: Edward, Prince of Wales and Tom Canty, a street beggar. During a chance encounter, the two realize they are identical and, as a lark, decide to exchange clothes and roles--a situation that briefly, but drastically, alters the lives of both youngsters.