"The classic boyhood adventure tale, updated with a new introduction by noted Mark Twain scholar R. Kent Rasmussen In recent years, neither the persistent effort to "clean up" the racial epithets in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn nor its consistent use in the classroom have diminished, highlighting the novel's wide-ranging influence and its continued importance in American society. An incomparable adventure story, it is a vignette of...

"The novel chronicles the lives of three generations of performers on the Cotton Blossom, a floating theater on a steamboat that travels between small towns along the banks of the Mississippi River, from the 1880s to the 1920s. The story moves from the Reconstruction Era riverboat to Gilded Age Chicago to Roaring Twenties New York, and finally returns to the Mississippi River."--Back cover.

The intrepid Jacky Faber, having once again eluded British authorities, heads west, hoping that no one will recognize her in the wilds of America. There she tricks the tall-tale hero Mike Fink out of his flatboat, equips it as a floating casino-showboat, and heads south to New Orleans, battling murderous bandits, British soldiers, and other scoundrels along the way. Will Jacky's carelessness and impulsive actions ultimately cause her beloved Jaimy...

"Delaney Detective Agency gets a taste of the spotlight when they are called to a case on a movie set in Greenville, MS, right on the Mississippi River. Marlon Brandon, heir to a wealthy and influential political family, has brought a film crew to town to film a drama about the 1927 flood that submerged a great deal of Greenville. Marlon wants the world to know the story of the flood -- and the heroic role the Brandon ancestors played in rescuing...

A fascinating look at the necessary profession of levee-building as it was practiced in the 1960's.

"Michael Patrick Hearn, author of the national bestseller The Annotated Wizard of Oz, has done equal justice to this great American novel. A Twain literary sleuth and an authority on children's literature, he considers all the literary, social, historical, and autobiographical aspects of Twain's classic tale of Huck and Jim's trip down the mighty Mississippi. In lively and fascinating annotations, Hearn's notes draw on everything from letters, manuscripts,...