The Floating Press: 2252 books

Maxim Gorky achieved literary acclaim in Russia against all odds. Orphaned at a young age and forced to fend for himself on the streets, Gorky had virtually no schooling, but he managed to capture the imaginations of readers through his intensely realistic descriptions of the hardships faced by the impoverished...

Published at the dawn of a new century as women's roles were rapidly shifting, Dutch writer Louis Couperus' novel The Inevitable presents a remarkably frank account of one young woman's liberation and sexual emancipation in the aftermath of a bruising divorce.

Henry James' short story "The Diary of a Man of Fifty" is a moving and thought-provoking meditation on aging and coming to terms with one's past. The narrator pays a return visit to Italy, where he spent some time many years before, and revisits memories of an ultimately doomed love affair, some painful and some enriching.

Charles Wesley Emerson's book The Evolution of Expression was a central text in the Monroe Conservatory of Oratory's curriculum in the early twentieth century. It was Emerson's firm belief that communication skills were the key to fulfilling one's potential and that a student who completed this academic program would have success regardless of their chosen endeavor or profession.

Fans of R. D. Blackmore's masterpiece of historical fiction, Lorna Doone, will love this novel, which also takes place in 17th century England and follows the fate of a plucky female protagonist who hopes to find true love amidst a brutal feud between warring tribes.

This fascinating fable from Kentucky-born author James Lane Allen imagines a distant future in which the earth has plunged into frozen darkness, extinguishing life as we know it. Only a few stalwart holdouts remain, including a pair of trees that have retained a kind of memory of what came to pass before the life-killing coldness moved in.

In his later years, renowned poet and classicist A. E. Housman began to sense that his creative power was dwindling and decided to cease writing poetry. However, on hearing the news that his closest friend was terminally ill, Housman gathered up some of his best unpublished work and dedicated the volume...

Pennsylvania-born poet and journalist Irving Sidney Dix published a number of collections over the course of his literary career. The volume The Comet and Other Verses highlights Dix's ability to plumb the depths of everyday experiences and find profound meaning. Fans of traditional verse will appreciate these well-wrought poems.

Over the course of his varied career, American poet Irving Sidney Dix served in a number of roles, including soldier, stenographer and newspaper editor. This breadth of experience gave Dix insight into the everyday lives of working men and women, a perspective that resonates throughout the stirring poems collected in The Calender and Other Verses, which many critics regard as his finest work.

After establishing a name for himself in the classic science fiction canon, author Poul Anderson tried his hand at historical fantasy. One of his indelible creations in the genre is the character of Cappen Varra. In this tale, the amusing scamp finds himself stranded in an inhospitable land and must rely on his wits to escape alive.

Renowned German poet Mathilde Blind published several influential volumes of verse in the late nineteenth century. The epic poem The Ascent of Man is her most ambitious literary undertaking. In it, she provides a poetic account of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. A relic from the era when the arts...

Known for his unique knack for creating three-dimensional portraits of children, author Roy Rolfe Gilson pulls it off again in the charming novel Miss Primrose. Told from the vantage point of a young boy, the tale relates the idyllic village life of Miss Letitia Primrose, and her father, a somewhat curmudgeonly scholar.

When his family's fortunes hit a rough patch, young Tom Wade takes matters into his own hands, leaving his native England and traveling to the Western U.S. to hunt for gold alongside his uncle. Along the way, the courageous duo encounters hostile natives, hungry animals, and a plethora of other dangers.

Under extreme duress, the human mind can come up with an array of impossibly complex coping mechanisms. Is that what's behind the strange epidemic that army physician Henry Harris has noticed overtaking soldiers who have returned from the distant celestial body known as Asteroid Y-3? Harris makes a trip...