Books with author Cloud Cover Classics

Black Jack by Max Brand, 1922. Frederick Schiller Faust (1892 - 1944) grew up in central California, and later worked as a cowhand on one of the many ranches of the San Joaquin Valley. Faust attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he began to write for student publications, poetry magazines, and newspapers. Failing to graduate, Faust joined the Canadian Army in 1915, but deserted the next year and moved to New York City. In the 1920s, Faust wrote extensively for pulp magazines, especially Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine, a weekly for which he would write over a million words a year under various pen names, often seeing two serials and a short novel published in a single issue. Many of his stories would later inspire films. He created the Western character Destry, featured in several cinematic versions of Destry Rides Again, and his character Dr. Kildare was adapted to motion pictures, radio, television, and comic books.

The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde, 1887. Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), poet and dramatist, was born in Dublin, and educated there at Trinity College and at Oxford. Known for his barbed wit, he was one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. Among his writings are Poems , The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel, and several plays, including Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of no Importance, and The Importance of being Earnest.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, 1889. Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was raised in Hannibal, Missouri. His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty. He worked as a typesetter and a riverboat pilot before heading west to fail at mining. In 1865, his humorous story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" brought him international attention and was even translated into classic Greek. Twain earned a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, but he invested in ventures that lost most of it - notably the Paige Compositor, a mechanical typesetter that failed because of its complexity and imprecision. He filed for bankruptcy in the wake of these financial setbacks, but he eventually chose to pay all his pre-bankruptcy creditors in full.

The Scarlet Plague by Jack London, 1912. Jack London (1876 - 1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. As a pioneer in the world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone. He is best remembered as the author of White Fang and Call of the Wild, set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and The Sea Wolf, of the San Francisco Bay area. London was a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers.

Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll, 1889. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832 - 1898), was an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon, and photographer. His most famous writings, as Lewis Carroll, are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, which includes the poem "Jabberwocky", and the poem "The Hunting of the Snark", all fine examples of literary nonsense.

The Untamed by Max Brand, 1919. Frederick Schiller Faust (1892 - 1944) grew up in central California, and later worked as a cowhand on one of the many ranches of the San Joaquin Valley. Faust attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he began to write for student publications, poetry magazines, and newspapers. Failing to graduate, Faust joined the Canadian Army in 1915, but deserted the next year and moved to New York City. In the 1920s, Faust wrote extensively for pulp magazines, especially Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine, a weekly for which he would write over a million words a year under various pen names, often seeing two serials and a short novel published in a single issue. Many of his stories would later inspire films. He created the Western character Destry, featured in several cinematic versions of Destry Rides Again, and his character Dr. Kildare was adapted to motion pictures, radio, television, and comic books.

The Chronicles of Clovis by Saki, 1911. Hector Hugh Munro (1870 - 1916), better known by the pen name Saki, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story, and often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, he himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noel Coward and P. G. Wodehouse.

To Have and to Hold by Mary Johnston, 1900. Mary Johnston (1870 - 1936) was an American novelist and women's rights advocate from Virginia. She was one of America's best selling authors during her writing career and had three silent films adapted from her novels. During her long career Johnston wrote, in addition to 23 novels, numerous short stories, two long narrative poems, and one play. She used her fame to advocate for women's rights and strongly supported the women's suffrage movement.