Zane Grey fished up to 300 days of the year. But, with all that time on the water, there was nothing more exciting or more compelling than the really big fish - the giants of the sea. In Zane Grey's day, blue fin tuna were pursued with harpoons and sometimes are even today. There is the story of a swordfish that was hooked at 10:30 in the morning and played until 11:30 that night - only to...! Tales of Swordfish and Tuna will dazzle and thrill any fishing heart.

I hate every wave of the ocean', the seasick Charles Darwin wrote to his family during his five-year voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle. It was this world-wide journey, however, that launched the scientists career.

The Mississippi River, known as “America’s River” and Mark Twain are practically synonymous in American culture. The popularity of Twain’s steamboat and steamboat pilot on the ever-changing Mississippi has endured for over a century. A brilliant amalgam of remembrance and reportage, by turns satiric, celebratory, nostalgic, and melancholy, Life on the Mississippi evokes the great river that Mark Twain knew as a boy and young man and the one he revisited as a mature and successful author.

In "The Model Millionaire", the destiny of a young, ambitious, brilliant pauper changes with an act of his misplaced generosity. "The Happy Prince" is one of Oscar Wilde’s renowned fairy tales. From his vantage point, high above the city, the statue of The Happy Prince gives of himself in a way most astonishing. In "The Sphinx Without a Secret", we learn of an enigmatic woman who holds a secret so close, no suitor can win her.

"Love Among the Chickens" is a comedic novel by British master of the genre, P. G. Wodehouse. The novel is narrated by Jeremy Garnet, an author and old friend of Ukridge. Seeing Ukridge for the first time in years, with a new wife in tow, Garnet finds himself dragged along on holiday to Ukridge's new chicken farm in Dorset. The novel intertwines Garnet's difficult wooing of a girl living nearby with the struggles of the farm, which are exacerbated by Ukridge's bizarre business ideas and methods.

Thoreau gives an account of three canoe and hiking journeys - by himself and with others - through the mostly uninhabited forests of Maine in the 1850s. Identifying birds, trees and plants by their botanical as well as their common names, he also records the Indian names of lakes, rivers and plants. He investigates the connections between waterways and trails, and provides detail on camping, fishing and hunting in the woods, using whatever is at hand. Extolling the beauty of the wilds that he encounters, Thorough’s narrative is also imbued with elements of his philosophy.

The name Captain James Cook is one of the most recognisable in Australian history - an almost mythic figure who is often discussed, celebrated, reviled and debated. But who was the real James Cook? This Yorkshire farm boy would go on to become the foremost mariner, scientist, navigator and cartographer of his era, and to personally map a third of the globe. His great voyages of discovery were incredible feats of seamanship and navigation.

Wallace picked up the name "Big-Foot" while in a Mexican prison, because the prison attendants couldn’t find a boot large enough to fit him. Not only was he large of foot but also of deeds. Big-Foot Wallace was an Indian-fighter, hunter, and Texas Ranger. Few men have witnessed as many stirring incidents, had more hair-breadth escapes, or gone through more of the hardships and perils of a border life than Big-Foot Wallace.

Legendary author and essayist E. B. White writes, "The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest." Covering a large number of subjects, this classic collection features 31 of White's most memorable essays.

The story of young Tom Brown's seemingly hideous years spent at rugby school and his spirited and astonishingly stalwart response to the institutionalised bullying prevalent at the 'Great' British public schools became exactly the campaigning tool its author hoped it would. The regimes at these schools had been largely unchallenged, with the assumption being that the education and training received were the best.

Anyone who loves fishing - on a lake, pond, river, or ocean - is guaranteed to love Jimmy Houston's insightful, instructive, and laugh-out-loud funny tips and tales. Whether he's fishing with sports or political celebrities or his children, Jimmy proves there's no story like a fish story, and here are his best-packed with all the know - how that has made his name a legend.

Bright Rivers chronicles the angling passions and frustrations of one of fly-fishing's greatest men of letters. A city dweller trapped in the complexities of modern life, Nick Lyons has always found solace in his pilgrimages to great rivers. It is there that he fishes for trout, and in Bright Rivers, Lyons recounts the sometimes moving, sometimes hilarious experiences of his expeditions to the Delaware, Beaverkill, Madison, Big Hole, and Yellowstone rivers, sharing reminiscences of trout taken, released, and sometimes lost.

In 1845 Henry David Thoreau, one of the principal New England Transcendentalists, left the small town of Concord for the country. Beside the lake of Walden he built himself a log cabin and returned to nature, to observe and reflect – while surviving on eight dollars a year. From this experience emerged Walden, one of the great classics of American literature.

In the early spring of 1845, Henry David Thoreau built and lived in a cabin near the shore of Walden Pond in rural Massachusetts. For the next two years, he enacted his own Transcendentalist experiment, living a simple life based on self-reliance, individualism, and harmony with nature. The journal he kept at that time evolved into his masterwork, Walden, an eloquent expression of a uniquely American philosophy.

The Log from the Sea of Cortez is the exciting day-by-day account of Steinbeck's trip to the Gulf of California with biologist Ed Ricketts. Drawn from the longer Sea of Cortez, it is a wonderful combination of science, philosophy, and high-spirited adventure.