Stefan Rudnicki

In seafaring literature, no fictional sailor's story can match this true, real-life adventure. Before the Wind is the memoir of early nineteenth-century sea captain Charles Tyng- from his childhood and love affair with the sea to his rise through the ranks to captain and ship owner in the tea and sugar trade. Before the Wind takes listeners on a trip around the world- from visits to Lord Byron in Italy and King Kamehameha in Hawaii to Napoleon's prison...

Today's modern, competitive business environment demands that executives conduct business operations more effectively and compassionately. Turning to the ancient wisdom of China provides insight for professionals who want to stay on the cutting edge. This program guides executives with fundamental teachings on the topics of leadership, strategy, selling, personnel, and ethics from the writings of Confucius, Chuang Tzu, Lao Tzu, and others to present...

Continues the sci-fi history of the Formic Wars and finds the warring nations and corporations of Earth struggling to set aside their differences to defend against an imminent alien invasion.

A city ignited by hate. A man in thrall to power. It's 1937. Poland is about to catch fire. In the boxing ring, Jakub Szapiro commands respect, revered as a hero by the Jewish community. Outside, he instills fear as he muscles through Warsaw as enforcer for a powerful crime lord. Murder and intimidation have their rewards. He revels in luxury, spends lavishly, and indulges in all the pleasures that barbarity offers. For a man battling to be king of...

Advised by his doctor to become more sociable, Golyadkin, a low-level bureaucrat, arrives uninvited at a birthday party his office manager is having for his daughter. After a number of socially awkward and increasingly uncomfortable moments, Golyadkin is asked to leave and flees the party. While making his way home through a snowstorm, an extraordinary thing happens: Golyadkin meets his double. At first the two are friendly, but it quickly becomes...

The Haunted Bookshop (1919) is a novel by Christopher Morley. Although less popular than Kitty Foyle (1939), a novel adapted into an Academy Award-winning film, The Haunted Bookshop is a fast-paced thriller that deserves a modern audience. From unassuming beginnings as a tale about a lovelorn advertising salesman who visits a charming bookstore, The Haunted Bookshop quickly morphs into a story of paranoia, stalking, and kidnapping. "If you are ever...

Herland (1915) is a utopian novel by American author and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Herland was originally published in The Forerunner, a monthly magazine edited by Gilman, before going out of print for the next several decades. The novel was republished with an influential introduction by scholar Ann J. Lane in 1979 and has since been recognized as an important work of science fiction written by a leading feminist of the early twentieth century. A...

A novel of naval life in Napoleonic France. After forty years of piracy on Eastern seas, Citizen Peyrol returns to his native France, a country now ravaged and scarred by revolution and war. Looking for peace in which to end his days, he withdraws to a safe harbor in a remote farmhouse on Escampobar Peninsula, which looks out to the distant Mediterranean, where the lovely Arlette lives with her aunt and the revolutionary Scevola. But the arrival of...

Ten twisted tales that have haunted generations of readers and writers from H. P. Lovecraft to the creators of the hit TV series True Detective Nightmare imagery courses through these stories like blood through the veins. In "The Repairer of Reputations," a Lethal Chamber stands at the edge of Washington Square Park, open to all who can no longer bear the sorrows of life. A Parisian sculptor discovers a liquid solution that can turn any living thing-a...

From "one of the greatest writers of this century," a fantasy masterpiece about the aftermath of a marriage between a mortal prince and an elfin princess. -Arthur C. Clarke Before the fellowships and wardrobes and dire wolves . . . . . . there was the village of Erl and the Kingdom of Elfland. Considered formative to the development of the fairy tale and high fantasy subgenres, The King of Elfland's Daughter follows Alveric, who...