Jack London’s best novels and novellas

Articles in this section

• "Hearts of Three" (1916) - a treasure-hunt adventure novel by Jack London (co-authored by Charles Goddard)

  1 April by Jack London

  As Jack London recounts in the interesting foreword to this unusual book, not only was he incapable of writing a successful film script, but “because a man had written a score of novels was no guarantee that he could write a good scenario. Quite to the contrary, it was quickly discovered that (...)

• "The Star Rover" (1915) - a novel about prison life in (and out of) San Quentin by Jack London

  3 February by Jack London

  A university professor, who has been condemned to life imprisonment in the (in)famous San Quentin prison in California for the murder of another professor in an uncontrolled fit of rage, is constantly subjected to the excruciatingly painful straight-jacket treatment, consisting of leaving him (...)

• "The Mutiny of the Elsinore" (1913) - an adventure novel on the high seas by Jack London

  3 February by Jack London

  John Pathurst is a rich, very successful and very blasé 30-year-old writer who has taken passage on a big 4-masted sailing-ship carrying coals from Baltimore to Seattle, with the aim of resting his jaded nerves. Right away there are signs that the trip is not going to be an easy one – the crew is (...)

• "Before Adam" (1906) - a prehistoric adventure novella by Jack London

  28 January by Jack London

  The narrator is a prehistoric youth who recounts his adventures in the middle Pleistocene era long before our time, when he and his tribe had to coexist and fight against not only ferocious carnivorous animals such as wild dogs, great boars, hyenas, and especially sabre-tooth tigers, but also (...)

• The Abysmal Brute (1913) - a boxing novella by Jack London

  20 January by Jack London

  The narrator of this story-with-a-message — that boxing is a corrupt business — is an (apparently) honest boxing manager who has been introduced to a phenomenally talented 22-year-old young giant whose father, a former boxing champion, has been training him intensively in their hideout in the (...)