The Floating Press imprint: 2252 books

This whaling adventure from beloved American author James Fenimore Cooper works on two levels. On the surface, it's an exciting maritime action-adventure tale recounting the twin voyages of two different ships seeking bounty and treasure in the waters around Antarctica. On a deeper level, it's a thought-provoking...

Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette is an inside look into the life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, written by her First Lady in Waiting Madame Campan. Born in 1755 and married to Louis XVI of France at the age of 14, Antoinette was renowned for her fabled excesses. She was condemned for...

The young orphan Pollyanna is sent to live with her stern Aunt in a dour New England town. Refusing to be cast down by her circumstances, Pollyanna begins teaching the town "the glad game", which her father taught her. To play, one must find something to be glad about in every situation. Gradually, the...

If you associate the Victorian era with prim and proper prudery, you're going to have to adjust your opinion after spending some time with The Oyster. Excerpted from one of the most titillating publications of the period, this collection of top-notch Victorian erotica will delight discerning connoisseurs.

Trips to the Moon collects together three works by the Assyrian master of rhetoric and satire, Lucian of Samosata. The works are regarded as some of the first novels in western civilization, including some of the earliest examples of science fiction. He is witty and derisive and parodies the work of Homer as well as lowbrow popular tales of his time.

Have you ever awoken from a particularly vivid dream to wonder what it could possibly mean? Do our nighttime reveries have real meaning and significance, or are they nothing more than random "white noise" generated as our brains recharge? In The Secret of Dreams, author Yacki Raizizun presents a remarkably comprehensive overview of the deeper meaning of these strange and wondrous mental fantasies.

In the late 1700s, stalwart schoolmaster John Gray is one of the hearty pioneers who helped settle what is now Kentucky. However, Gray is chronically unlucky in love, and in the aftermath of a series of disastrous relationships, he leaves his beloved Kentucky to get a fresh start in Virginia. Will Gray ever find true happiness?

It is the year 2072, sixty years on from the scarlet plague that decimated the earth's population. As one of the few who knew life before the plague, James Howard Smith tries to impart what he knows to his grandsons while he still can. Jack London's visionary post-apocalyptic novel The Scarlet Plague was written in 1912.

In the context of a short story, every sentence, every word must serve a specific purpose. That's why the writers who have mastered this form -- Flannery O'Connor, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Raymond Carver -- are often afforded the highest critical praise. In Short Story Writing: A Practical...

Today, quirky or eccentric outsiders are often afforded a measure of tolerance or even respect. In the nineteenth century, however, these original thinkers were often regarded as dangerous crackpots and subjected to scorn -- or worse. John Kendrick Bangs' The Idiot follows the ups and downs of one such unfortunate fellow in a most amusing fashion.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage was the poem which brought Lord Byron public recognition. He himself disliked the poem, because he felt it revealed too much of himself. In it a young man (called childe after the medieval term for a candidate for knighthood) travels to distant lands to relieve the boredom...

Although Buddhism has been an important cultural force in the East for thousands of years, the tenets of this religion and belief system were largely unknown throughout much the West until the twentieth century. In this volume, Haldeman-Julius presents a comprehensive overview of Buddhist belief, doctrine, and practice in an introductory format designed to appeal to Western readers.

Jump into Jonathan Swift's take-no-prisoners parody of seventeenth-century Christianity. Equal parts uproarious humor and incisive satire, A Tale of a Tub dissects the foibles and shortcomings of three brothers, each of whom represents a different branch of the Christian religion. Swift, himself...

Today, we take the issues of endangered species and extinction very seriously; however, in the early twentieth century, these ideas had barely begun to enter the popular discourse. In Birds and Man, ornithologist William Henry Hudson's discussions of dwindling bird populations helped to highlight the need to protect endangered species and usher this idea into the mainstream.