Full AspenCat Catalog

Martel's novel tells the story of Pi--short for Piscine--an unusual boy raised in a zoo in India. Pi's father decides to move the family to live in Canada and sell the animals to the great zoos of America. The ship taking them across the Pacific sinks and Pi finds himself the sole human survivor on a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra with a broken leg and Bengal tiger called Richard Parker. Life of Pi brings together many themes including...

The men on board HMS Terror have every expectation of triumph. As part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage, they are as scientifically supported an enterprise as has ever set forth. As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations,...

"Adrift in a raft after a deadly ship explosion, nine people struggle for survival at sea. Three days pass. Short on water, food and hope, they spot a man floating in the waves. They pull him in. 'Thank the Lord we found you,' a passenger says. 'I am the Lord,' the man whispers....In The Stranger in the Lifeboat, Albom keeps us guessing until the end: Is this strange and quiet man really who he claims to be? What actually happened to cause the explosion?...

The enchanting story of a shipwrecked family --a minister, his wife, and four sons-- who are cast up on a desert island, build a wonderful house in a tree, and survive so cleverly and happily apart from the world that they never want to be rescued.

In 1819, the 238-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage to hunt whales. Fifteen months later the Essex was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale. Fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, the 20-man crew set out in three small boats for South America, almost 3,000 miles away. Three months later, only eight were left alive. This book shares a fantastic saga of survival and adventure, steeped in the lore of the whaling tradition,...

"Widely acknowledged as the first English novel, Daniel Defoe's adventure story of a shipwrecked sailor became an instant classic upon its publication in 1719 and the yardstick for countless castaway narratives to follow." "Robinson Crusoe, an English sailor, finds himself marooned on a desert island after the rest of his shipmates drown in a terrible wreck. He survives on the island for nearly three decades, domesticating livestock, cultivating plants,...

"When a forty-seven-foot sailboat disappears in the Gulf Stream during a disastrous storm, it leaves behind three weary sailors struggling to stay alive on a life raft in the throes of violent waves eighty feet tall. This middle-grade adaptation of an adult nonfiction book tells the story of the four intrepid Coast Guardsmen who braved the sea and this ruthless storm, hoping to rescue the stranded sailors"--

Presents a guide to surviving in the wilderness, explaining how to find and prepare plant and animal food, light fires, find or make shelter, stay orientated, avoid trouble, and respond to emergency situations

"Describes the events surrounding the sinking of the ship Titanic in 1912. The reader's choices reveal the historical details from the perspective of a first-class passenger, a third-class passenger, and a crewmember"--Provided by publisher.

Recounts the ill-fated nineteenth-century naval expedition to the North Pole under the leadership of George Washington De Long that resulted in the sinking of the USS Jeannette and the crew's epic struggle for survival in the harsh and unforgiving Arcticenvironment.