He was Sam Clemens, steamboat pilot, before he was Mark Twain, famous author. His better-known name originated with the lingo of navigation, and much of his writing was informed by his shipboard adventures on one of the world's great rivers. In this classic of American literature, Twain offers lively recollections ranging from his salad days as a novice pilot to views from the passenger deck in the twilight of the river culture's heyday. Under the...

Delilah Dickinson is in a charge of a tourist group taking a cruise on a Mississippi riverboat. She's not anticipating any problems, but trouble rears its ugly head when one of the members of her tour group turns up dead. His neck's broken and it's definately not an accident.

Convinced that he is cursed after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, 20-year-old Robert Chatham, who, constantly followed by trouble, has lost his will to live, finally shakes his demons until he is forced to make an impossible choice.

Rebel without a cause (1955): The adolescent son of a well-to-do family gets into trouble with other kids and the police. East of Eden (1955): A wayward Salinas Valley youth vies for the affection of his hardened father with his favored brother. Cat on a hot tin roof (1958): A drama of the problems of a wealthy but decadent family in the South. A streetcar named Desire (1951): Set in the steamy squalor of New Orleans, the story of a neurotic woman's...

The adventures and pranks of a mischievous boy growing up in a 19th-century Mississippi River town as he plays hooky on an island, witnesses a crime, hunts for pirate's treasure, and becomes lost in a cave--Novelist.