Best Selling Books by George Alfred Henty

The Punic Wars began as a struggle for empire and afterwards for existence on the part of Carthage. Hannibal was a great and skillful general who defeated the Romans at Trebia, Lake Trasimenus, and Cannae and all but took Rome.

You may be told perhaps that there is no good to be obtained from tales of fighting and bloodshed—that there is no moral to be drawn from such histories. Believe it not. War has its lessons as well as Peace. You will learn from tales like this that determination and enthusiasm can accomplish marvels, that true courage is generally accompanied by magnanimity and gentleness, and that if not in itself the very highest of virtues, it is the parent of almost all the others, since but few of them can be practiced without it. The courage of our forefathers has created the greatest empire in the world around a small and in itself insignificant island; if this empire is ever lost, it will be by the cowardice of their descendants. At no period of her history did England stand so high in the eyes of Europe as in the time whose events are recorded in this volume. A chivalrous king and an even more chivalrous prince had infected the whole people with their martial spirit, and the result was that their armies were for a time invincible, and the most astonishing successes were gained against numbers which would appear overwhelming. The victories of Cressy and Poitiers may be to some extent accounted for by superior generalship and discipline on the part of the conquerors; but this will not account for the great naval victory over the Spanish fleet off the coast of Sussex, a victory even more surprising and won against greater odds than was that gained in the same waters centuries later over the Spanish Armada. The historical facts of the story are all drawn from Froissart and other contemporary historians, as collated and compared by Mr. James in his carefully written history. They may therefore be relied upon as accurate in every important particular.

"I wish most heartily that something would happen," Harry Parkhurst, a midshipman of some sixteen years of age, said to his chum, Dick Balderson, as they leaned on the rail of her majesty''s gunboat Serpent, and looked gloomily at the turbid stream that rolled past the ship as she lay at anchor. "One day is just like another-one is in a state of perspiration from morning till night, and from night till morning. There seems to be always a mist upon the water; and if it were not that we get up steam every three or four days and run out for twenty-four hours for a breath of fresh air, I believe that we should be all eaten up with fever in no time. Of course, they are always talking of Malay pirates up the river kicking up a row; but it never seems to come off."

At the turn of the fourteenth century in Scotland, young Archie Forbes becomes involved with both William Wallace and Robert the Bruce in the struggle for Scottish independence from English rule.

In 1860, with both parents dead, sixteen-year-old Tom, anxious to find a way to care for his sisters, begins a two-year adventure of danger and exploration when he leaves his native England to join his Uncle Harry and seek his fortune in the Rocky Mountain wilderness of Colorado.

One day, when Jack came up from his rounds at ten o''clock, to eat his breakfast and write up his journal of the state of the mine, he saw Mr. Brook (the owner of the mine) and the manager drive up to the pit mouth. Jack shrank back from the little window of the office where he was writing, and did not look out again until he knew that they had descended the mine; he did not wish to have any appearance of thrusting himself forward. For another hour he wrote; and then the window of the office flew in pieces, the chairs danced, and the walls rocked, while a dull heavy roar, like distant thunder, burst upon his ears. Jack leaped to his feet and rushed to the door. Black smoke was pouring up from the pit''s mouth, sticks and pieces of wood and coal were falling in a shower in the yard; and Jack saw that his worst fears had been realized, and that a terrible explosion had taken place in the Vaughan pit. For a moment he stood stunned. There were, he knew, over three hundred men and boys in the pit, and he turned faint and sick as the thought of their fate came across him. Then he ran towards the top of the shaft. The bankman lay insensible at a distance of some yards from the pit, where he had been thrown by the force of the explosion. Two or three men came running up with white scared faces. The smoke had nearly ceased already; the damage was done, and a deadly stillness seemed to reign.

In 1250 B.C. the teenaged son of the Egyptian high priest sets off a series of harrowing events when he accidentally kills the sacred cat of Bubastes and, accompanied by his sister and two foreign slaves, embarks on a dangerous journey to find safe haven beyond the borders of Egypt.

Young Edgar Blagrove participates in the Battle of the Pyramids and the revolt at Cairo. He witnesses the famous naval battle at Aboukir and later is in the thick of the defenders at Acre.

Retelling of the fight between the original Irish owners and Cromwell followers over Irish soil.

"Among Malay Pirates And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril" from George Alfred Henty. Prolific English novelist and special correspondent (1832-1902).