A hijacked jumbo jet bound for London blows apart high above the English Channel. Two figures, Indian actors of opposing sensibilities, Gibreel and Saladin, fall to Earth, and are washed up on an English beach. Soon curious changes occur -Gibreel seems to have acquired a halo, while Saladin grows hooves and bumps at his temples. They are transformed into living symbols of what is angelic and evil. This is the initial act in an odyssey that merges...

Their captain's insane vision of a Northwest Passage has kept the crewmen of HMS Terror trapped in Arctic ice for two years without a thaw. But the real threat to their survival isn't the ever-shifting landscape of white, the provisions that have turned to poison, or the ship slowly buckling in the grip of the frozen ocean. The real threat is whatever is out in the frigid darkness, stalking their ship, snatching and brutally killing their fellow seamen....

On a warm May night in San Francisco, the Ritz-Carlton ballroom shimmers with crystal and silver as a glittering, celebrity-studded crowd gathers for a charity dinner dance. The evening is perfect-until, just minutes before midnight, the room begins to sway. Glass shatters. And as the lights go out, people begin to scream ... In the earthquake's aftermath, the lives of four strangers will converge ... Sarah Sloane, the beautiful wife of a financial...

Written in 1896, The Island of Dr. Moreau is one of the earliest scientific romances. An instant sensation, it was meant as a commentary on Darwin's theory of evolution, which H. G. Wells stoutly believed. The story centers on the depraved Dr. Moreau, who conducts unspeakable animal experiments on a remote tropical island, with hideous, humanlike results. Edward Prendick, an English-man whose misfortunes bring him to the island, is witness to the...

Left alone by her Indian tribe when they decide to sail to the east, Karana, a young Indian girl, lives on a beautiful but isolated island off the coast of California, where she spends eighteen years, surviving through her enormous courage and self-reliance. Year after year she waits for the ship to return but it never does. Finally she realizes she must make a fateful choice: follow her people on her own or remain alone for the rest of her life....

"A dying woman's attempt to recount the story of her life reveals the fragility of memory and the illusion of identity"--

Fleeing war-torn China, a small planeload of people is hijacked to an idyllic valley in the Himalayas where time has virtually stopped. There Conway, a British diplomat, falls in love with a beautiful woman, and is asked to remain in Shangri-La as its new leader.

Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat,...

"Former war correspondent Lukas Landon is alone, trapped under 150-feet of water in an overturned shrimp trawler at the bottom of the ocean. The only thing keeping him alive is an air bubble in the ship's bow. But the water level is rising, and time is running out. Landon doesn't know if he will survive . . . or if he even deserves to. After years of covering bloody battles in Afghanistan and Iraq, Landon's once promising life took a steep nosedive....

"Everyone believes Adam to be something he's not. Sometimes that's because he's told them a story. Sometimes he's told himself one. But when Adam joins an Alaskan fishing crew that's promising quick money, the dangerous work and harsh lifestyle strip away all fabrications and force a dark-hearted exploration of who he really is. On the unforgiving Bering Sea, Adam finds the adventure and authenticity of a fisherman's life revelatory. The labor required...