When a mysterious stranger with a scar on his cheek dies, young Jim Hawkins ends up with a mysterious map of an island. He imagines that he is off to a wonderful sea adventure that will lead to a huge treasure. But once he sets sail with Dr. Livesey and the one-legged Long John Silver, the dream turns out to include greed, mutiny, and murder. - Back cover. To help students experience the joys and benefits of reading, Townsend Press presents the Townsend...

"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." With this celebrated sentence, Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world. By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper seeks to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths...

Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's novel is just as powerful today as when it was written -- in its reflection of poverty and hopelessness, and what...

"When Black Beauty was born one sweet spring day, he could not have imagined the life ahead of him. Following his mother's advice to do his work with a good will, he enjoys the adventures of country and city life, makes new friends, and suffers from the cruelty and greed of his human masters. Beauty faces each challenge with bravery and kindness -- and then a chance encounter with an old friend brings him the greatest joy of all. Anna Sewell's classic...

Towering classic of dystopian satire, BRAVE NEW WORLD is a brilliant and terrifying vision of a soulless society--and of one man who discovers the human costs of mindless conformity. Hundreds of years in the future, the World Controllers have created an ideal civilization. Its members, shaped by genetic engineering and behavioral conditioning, are productive and content in roles they have been assigned at conception. Government-sanctioned drugs and...