Talking Handkerchief, and Other Stories

The title story features a handkerchief that speaks, and that's your first clue this isn't your grandmother's adventure tales. Thomas Wallace Knox wrote these 22 stories after circumnavigating the globe twice, and it shows. He knew the Pacific islands where cannibals lurk, the merchant ships haunted by pirates, and the jungles where nature itself turns lethal. These are escapades of remarkable ingenuity: a man stows away on a pirate vessel with nothing but wit, survivors of a shipwreck outmaneuver sharks and starvation, and travelers negotiate with tribal chiefs whose hospitality might be a prelude to dinner. Knox's narrator moves through the world's danger zones with a peculiar blend of Victorian composure and genuine terror. The prose has that satisfying 19th-century quality where danger is described with literary precision, where a near-miss with a python is worth three paragraphs of careful observation. For readers who miss the adventure novels of H. Rider Haggard or Rudyard Kipling, or anyone who wonders what happened before Indiana Jones, this collection delivers the real thing - stories written by a man who had actually been there.