Black Beauty / Call of the Wild

Black Beauty / Call of the Wild

Black Beauty himself is handsome and sweet-tempered but strong, spirited and with fine instincts. His various owners make him do all kinds of tasks, from being a carriage horse on a country estate to a cab horse in town. Black Beauty's tale must be one of the best-loved animal stories ever written.

Call of the Wild: In this quintessential adventure story, Jack London takes readers on an arduous journey through the forbidding Alaskan landscape during the gold rush of the 1890s. Buck, a rangy mixed breed used to a comfortable, sun-filled life as a family dog, is stolen by a greedy opportunist and sold to dog traffickers. In no time, Buck finds himself on a team of sled dogs run ragged in the harsh winter of the Klondike. In a climate where every day is a savage struggle for survival, the last traces of Buck's soft, pampered existence are erased as his dormant primordial urges—deeply embedded for generations—are brutally awakened.

The superb detail, taken from London's firsthand knowledge of Alaskan frontier life, makes this classic tale as gripping today as it was almost a hundred years ago. No other novel has so clearly shown the fragile separation between tame and wild, between man and beast.