"As I sit down to write here amidst the shadows of vine-leaves under the blue sky of southern Italy, it comes to me with a certain quality of astonishment that my participation in these amazing adventures of Mr. Cavor was, after all, the outcome of the purest accident. It might have been any one. I fell into these things at a time when I thought myself removed from the slightest possibility of disturbing experiences. I had gone to Lympne because I...

A young sea captain tests his mettle off the coast of Siam in this nineteenth-century psychological tale from the author of Heart of Darkness.   When his sailing ship is anchored in the Gulf of Siam-now Thailand-a first-time sea captain questions his ability to command. Anxious and eager for his crew to like him, he takes the first shift of the night watch. Alone in the dark, he encounters a mysterious man swimming alongside the vessel. The captain...

El corazón de las tinieblas es sin duda reconocido como el mejor de los relatos de Joseph Conrad. El libro está ambientado en una atmósfera constante de misterio y amenaza, y narra el peligroso viaje de Marlow por un río africano (sin duda el Congo aunque no es nombrado en el relato) para relevar a un agente del director de la compañía que comercializa marfil internacionalmente, el famoso y formidable señor Kurtz. Lo que el marino puede observar...

"The tale of a man's inability to escape his self-delusion and the tragic results that ensue, Almayer's Folly unfolds with the lush prose and keen psychological insights for which its author is renowned. Set in nineteenth-century Borneo, the novel recounts the brief rise and protracted fall of Kaspar Almayer, a Dutch merchant who has struggled for 25 years to practice his trade in the jungle. Only his daughter, Nina, brightens Almayer's embittered...

"At age nineteen, young Eton graduate Eric Blair set sail for India, dreading the assignment ahead. Along with several other young conscripts, he would be trained for three years as a servant of the British Empire, overseeing the local policemen in Burma. Navigating the social, racial, and class politics of his fellow British at the same time as he learned the local languages and struggled to control his men would prove difficult enough. But doing...

Saved by a mage's intervention from certain death, Kaspar, the evil Duke of Olasko, is lord no more -- reduced to an exile's existence and forced to wander the harshest realms of the world he once enslaved. Merciless deserts, forbidding mountains, and vast oceans now separate the once powerful despot from his former seat of power -- his dark dreams of vengeance overwhelmed by the daily struggle for survival. But there is a larger drama that will entangle...

Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure. This elegant edition features an afterword by Dr. Keith Carabine, specialist in American literature and former chair of the Joseph Conrad society. One night on the Thames, Charles Marlowe tells his fellow sailors the vivid and brutal tale of his time...

"There has always been a darkness to Ilmar, but never more so than now. The city chafes under the heavy hand of the Palleseen occupation, the choke-hold of its criminal underworld, the boot of its factory owners, the weight of its wretched poor and the burden of its ancient curse. What will be the spark that lights the conflagration? Despite the city's refugees, wanderers, murderers, madmen, fanatics and thieves, the catalyst, as always, will be the...

Baron Valdemar and his people have found a temporary haven, but it cannot hold all of them, or for long. Trouble could follow on their heels at any moment, and there are too many people for Crescent Lake to support. Those who are willing to make a further trek by barge on into the West will follow him into a wilderness depopulated by war and scarred by the terrible magics of a thousand years ago and the Mage Wars. But the wilderness is not as empty...