Mark Twain was known as a great American short-story writer as well as novelist and humorist. This collection of eighteen of his best short stories, from the well known to the lesser known, displays his mastery of Western humor and frontier realism. The stories also show how Twain earned his place in American letters as a master writer in the authentic native idiom. He was exuberant and irreverent, but underlying the humor was a vigorous desire for...

Mark Twain relates the boyhood experiences on the Mississippi that led to his ambition to be a river-boat pilot

King Bullfrog sends out an expedition to determine if Man really did roam the earth at one time

The adventures of a boy growing up in half-settled Missouri in the 1840's, who with a runaway slave floated down the Mississippi on a raft.

Tom Trimble is a concept design engineer who has just created Hermes, a human-like robot who will pilot Stardust One, a new U.S. spacecraft designed to travel farther and faster than anything yet conceived. When the ship is about to launch, Trimble quickly boards the craft to reassure the robot when lightning strikes, igniting the rockets and blasting Stardust One into space at a relativistic speed. The ship is finally brought under control and makes...