Best Short Stories of Jack London

This exhilarating volume collects twenty-one stories of adventure in the Far North, the South Seas, and beyond, from the acclaimed author of The Call of the Wild and White Fang.

Told in the colorful and exciting style that became the hallmark of Jack London’s writing, these stories bring out strongly the underlying themes of all the author’s works—man’s reversion to the fundamental laws of self-preservation in the face of overwhelming natural forces. Whether London wrote about prizefighters, sailors, gold-seekers, or tough men and women, he portrayed them largely as he knew them in real life.

These twenty-one tales range in locale from Alaska to the South Sea islands, with stories including:

• “The White Silence”
• “To Build a Fire”
• “To The Man on Trial”
• “The Law of Life”
• “The Wit of Porportuk”
• “The Heathen”
• “A Piece of Steak”
• “Love of Life”
• “Lost Face”
• “The Pearls of Parlay”
• “An Odyssey of the North”
. . . and more!

Brilliant, poetic, swift with violence and action, London’s stories clearly illustrate the unique spirit of his unbridled genius. Critics admitted that the young firebrand—“while frightfully primitive”—was challenging Poe, Kipling, and Melville as a one-in-a-million storyteller.