Classic Adventure Stories

Violent, tumultuous times. Exotic locales. Evil, powerhungry villains. Beautiful

women. Brash heroes with pistols and swords.

Sure sounds like a swashbuckling tale to me.

With the success of movies like The Mask of Zorro and the Pirates of the

Caribbean series, swashbucklers have never been more popular than they

are now. And Classic Adventure Stories: Swashbucklers brings together four

novels that are standouts of the genre:

• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883), the

model by which all pirate stories and boy’s adventure

novels are judged;

• The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy (1905),

the original inspiration for modern costumed crimefighter

characters (including the main character of our

last novel);

• Captain Blood by Raphael Sabatini (1922), possibly the

most popular swashbuckler to feature an antihero—a

hero driven into a life of crime by unfair circumstances,

who seeks to maintain a code of honor while living a

criminal’s life; and

• The Curse of Capistrano (aka The Mark of Zorro) by Johnston

McCulley (1919), which gave us the ever-popular Zorro,

inspired the creation of Batman, and jumpstarted the

adventure movie genre with the silent film The Mark of

Zorro, starring Douglas Fairbanks, in 1920.

For more than a century, millions have thrilled to the stories in this book.

So sharpen your cutlass, load your pistol, and prepare for some rollicking

adventure as you journey through Classic Adventure Stories: Swashbucklers!