Adventure Short Storey Collections

Ruskin Bond’s simple characters, living amidst the lush forests of the Himalayan foothills, are remarkable for their quiet heroism, courage and grace, and age-old values of honesty and fidelity. Residents of nondescript villages and towns, they lead lives that are touched by natural beauty as...

Mister Tidwell is a scholarly Oxford professor snatched out of his bookish world and pressed into service aboard Lord Nelson’s legendary British fleet - in the position of schoolmaster. Such is the life of the land-loving, seafaring Mister Tidwell, Gunner. Thrust into service at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, Tidwell soon finds himself directly in the line of fire and way out of his depth. Fate has cast him into a terrible and terrifying spot - alone on deck to face the fearsome approach of a French man-o’-war.

Tex Larimee is a grizzled Arizona sheriff who’s leaving the deserts of Cactus County behind, blazing a trail east to mix it up with The Slickers in the canyons of Manhattan. Tex’s welcome to New York is a rude one. Robbed of his cash, gun and badge, he’s locked in a room in back of a run-down bar. Breaking out of the bar, he goes looking for his best friend...only to find him dead, his throat cut. And the cops accuse Tex of committing the murder.

Fighter pilot Gary Forsythe is a man on fire. He’s tough, steely-eyed, hunted by many and feared by all. He’s British Secret Service - a striking predecessor to James Bond - with a chip on his shoulder and a .50 caliber machinegun in his flying killing machine. He is the devil - with wings. The Japanese have invaded Manchuria, and Forsythe has made it his mission to stop them. Japanese Military Intelligence has made it their mission to knock the Devil out of the skies.

He’s a lady’s man, a man’s man—and a wanted man, on the run in 1930s Europe.... Meet Blacky Lee, ruggedly handsome with a quick wit and a roguish charm—with larceny in his heart and a price on his head. A price put there by the German Gestapo. But Blacky’s always got an angle, and this time it’s as audacious as they come. He’ll hide in plain sight, impersonating the crowned head of a Balkan kingdom. He’ll become The Iron Duke.

In an attempt to reclaim his stolen oil fields, Bob Sherman secretly hires on as a deckhand aboard the yacht of Herbert Marmion, the man who ruthlessly stole them. When a hurricane sends the yacht to an uncharted island, the entire crew is captured by pirates—including Marmion’s beautiful daughter.

A blind obsession. A driving ambition. A relentless, unrestrained, single-minded pursuit of a shiny metal. These are the symptoms of a condition known as gold fever, and, like Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, American mining engineer Captain Humbert Reynolds has got it bad. Possible side effects include: temporary insanity, a propensity for violence, and death.

Meet Eddie Moran, a slightly disreputable American cooling his heels in French Morocco. He's as smooth as they come, one step ahead of the game...and of the police. Who's after him? Just about everybody. What's he done? A bit of everything - smuggler, revolutionary, whatever crooked little scheme will pay for his next meal or next drink. But Eddie's latest caper is one he may not be able to escape....even if he wants to.

Vic Kennedy is in one hell of a jam. Quick-witted and sharp-tongued with a maverick sense of adventure, Vic’s flown out of trouble by the skin of his teeth...and straight into the jaws of disaster. He chose the wrong side of a rebellion, and now the French have bid him adieu and the British have said off you go. It seems the only place that will have him is Greece. The problem with that is, as soon as the Greeks get him, they plan on giving him a real send off - at the gallows.

As a lieutenant in the US Marine Corps, Michael Stuart was once considered an officer and a gentleman. But that’s all changed. Now he’s seen as a renegade, a traitor, and a thief. Stuart is a man without a country...and perhaps without a prayer. Why? Because in a daring plot to foil the Japanese puppet regime in China, he set out to reinstate the country’s true emperor. Known now as The Red Dragon, Stuart is a soldier of fortune in war-torn Manchuria - and a man of honor in a world of treachery.

Itauk the Madman has spread death to the Yukon, throwing the bodies of his victims to his sled team of 12 wolves. Tracking him down are Canadian Mountie Tommy McKenna and his partner, Simmons. But when the pair separate to hunt for food, Itauk attacks Simmons and lets his wolves make an unmentionable feast that Tommy later discovers on his return to camp.

An obscure original manuscript of Marco Polo’s travels ... A tantalizing clue to the site of Kublai Khan’s fabled burial site ... A chance to unearth the truth behind a long-lost treasure. It’s an opportunity that would make Indiana Jones drop everything but his whip and race off to China. But he’d be too late. Lieutenant Jonathan Daly is way ahead of him. Two bullet holes and a bad case of malaria may not be enough to stop Daly, but a crew of criminals, a brood of British agents, and the entire Chinese army are all in the game ... and determined to keep him out of it.

Adventurer Phil Sheridan boldly and shrewdly enlists the help of native headhunters to drive out a predatory local regime and put an end to a reign of tyranny in the southern seas of Indonesia.

The angry drunk. The shameless womanizer. The coward who ran away and got his comrades killed. The ice-cold assassin for hire. And me, the girl with abandonment issues as deep and wide as the Southern Sea. The five us are all so different, we shouldn't work together. Most of the time, we don't. And yet, every once in a while, I get a glimpse of what might be, if we manage to move beyond our difficult pasts long enough to become the family our dragons need.

Farmer Eben Smith heads off to the big city to trade his wagonload of produce. But he barters a lot more than goods after he stumbles across a strange crossroads in time, bargains with different cultures in alternate realities, and accidentally wreaks havoc and chaos in each.

The world is divided between Asia and the United Continents - two great super powers locked in eternal warfare. But the balance of power is about to shift in Asia’s favor. They have developed a top-secret weapon - the cohesion projector-that could lead to annihilation on an unprecedented scale.... But as far as Lorrilard is concerned, the number one problem with the projector is that it stands in the way of his profits. Can he find a way to subvert the powerful weapon and resume his enterprising exploits?

Saddle tramp Petey McGuire doesn’t have much to live for. The trail in front of him stretches out long and hot, and there’s no end in sight. He’s been beaten down, beaten up, and kicked around so long, he’d run away from his own shadow if he could. But there’s one fight he can’t run from - the fight against hunger. Petey needs a job quick, before he drops dead in the dust. But the only way to get one is to act cool and talk tough - in other words, become the exact opposite of Petey McGuire.

Tim Beckdolt, rangy and self-reliant, is as American as the frontier itself. But after spending eight treacherous months digging $175,000 in gold out of Desperation Peak - all he has left is desperation. Two sadistic strangers have taken his gold, and now they want to take his life. He's on the run - the target of a Devil’s Manhunt.

Penniless, homeless, and virtually lifeless, the vagrant “Doughface” Jack is about to discover that where medical marvels meet the mysteries of the human mind, amazing things happen. The Tramp acquires a capability beyond his imagination and without equal on Earth. Riding the rails, Jack runs afoul of a local sheriff and ends up with a crushed skull. He’s as good as dead until a savvy country doctor performs a bit of medical magic.

Wrongfully accused, Spar has been condemned to suffer the brutality of the guards and the conditions on Devil’s Island. But they haven’t broken his will, and now, escaping, he has one mission in life: revenge. Spar’s out to kill the man who put him into the devil’s hands. But he’ll have to take on a gallery of rogues who are as treacherous as the waters of the Caribbean.