Books with author Jo Knowles

Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, "A Separate Peace" is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world. A bestseller for more than thirty years, "A Separate Peace" is John Knowles's crowning achievement and an undisputed American classic.

An Idealized Middle Ages, a world filled with violent tests of courage, clamorous and raging battle, adventurous quests, and yearning love of knight and damsel unfolds for the reader. This volume invites you to enter the medieval world of knightly legend and chivalric lore. This deluxe Children’s Classic edition of King Arthur is produced with high-quality, leatherlike binding with gold stamping, full-color covers, colored endpapers with a book nameplate. Some of the other titles in this series include: Anne of Green Gables, Black Beauty, Little Women, The Secret Garden and Treasure Island.

In 1913 Joseph Knowles, a professional illustrator and writer, set out into the wilderness of Maine to begin a two-month survival experiment - this book is his story, inclusive of his original illustrations. Commissioned by the Boston Post to venture into the woodlands, Joseph Knowles was far from your typical survivalist. Middle-aged and quite portly, he was a newspaperman rapidly going to seed. However, a will to escape what he termed the 'sham side of modern life' led him to undertake a quest to live off the land for some two months, his quest constantly reported on by his own paper. In terms of writing, Knowles realist reflections upon his time in the woods represent a clear departure from the vaunting of the natural world so popular in American literature. Rather than admire nature's beauty, he combines his own thoughts on life with descriptions of the physical and mental effects of living in the great outdoors, while including elements of popular adventure stories such as Tarzan. Knowles' exploits attracted a public frenzy at the time. On emerging from the woods, he ventured into the city of Boston only to be honored by City Hall. For weeks prior, the locals had read story after story of Knowles' exploits, relayed to the newspaper by sketches drawn upon birch bark and deposited in an previously agreed place. A crowd of some 200,000 people gathered to hear a short speech, and comparisons were made to Davy Crockett. Today, among local historians and Bostonians Knowles adventures are a minor urban legend. While many doubt the veracity of part of Knowles' story, it is an undoubtedly intriguing tale. The author went on to enjoy a short-lived career in early Hollywood cinema, eventually settling in the state of Washington, where he resumed work as a drawer of sketches and died in 1942.