Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

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 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.

"World War II, October 21, 1942. A B-17 bomber drones high over the Pacific Ocean, sending a desperate SOS into the air. The crew is carrying America's greatest living war hero on a secret mission deep into the battle zone. But the plane is lost, burning through its final gallons of fuel. At 1:30 p.m., there is only one choice left: an emergency landing at sea. If the crew survives the impact, they will be left stranded without food or water hundreds...

Tess, an aspiring seamstress, can't believe her good luck when she meets and is hired by famous designer Lady Lucile Duff Gordon to be a personal maid on the Titanic. On board, Tess catches the eye of two men, one a roughly-hewn but kind sailor and the other an enigmatic Chicago millionaire. Then, on the fourth night, disaster strikes. Amidst the chaos and desperate urging of two very different suitors, Tess is one of the last people allowed on a...

When the freighter on which they are traveling is torpedoed by a German submarine during World War II, a twelve-year-old white boy, blinded by a blow on the head, and an old Negro are stranded on a small desert island in the Caribbean where the boy acquires a new kind of vision, courage, and love from his old companion.

When David takes the Frog, his sailboat, out to scatter his uncle's ashes, he is caught in a storm and swept hundreds of miles southwest.

On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared -- Lt. Louis Zamperini ... Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a floundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft and beyond, a trial even greater. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended...

Bailey Wingateś scheming adult stepchildren are surprised when their fatherś will leaves Bailey in control of their fortune, and war ensues. A year later, while flying from Seattle to Denver in a small plane, Bailey nearly dies herself when the engine sputters-and then fails. Cam Justice, her sexy Texan pilot, manages to crash-land the aircraft. Stranded in the wilderness, and struggling to douse her feelings for the ruggedly handsome man by her...

After his parents, two sisters, and he have spent six years in a vast underground compound built by his wealthy father to protect them from a nuclear holocaust, fifteen-year-old Eli, whose twin brother and grandmother were left behind, discovers that his father has perpetrated a monstrous hoax on them all.

"Being shipwrecked on a jungle island in the middle of the South Pacific was bad enough. But now that Carter, Vanessa, Buzz and Jane have lost their boat--and almost everything on board--to another violent storm, it's like starting over. That means finding food and shelter, making fire for the first time, dealing with the wild boars that roam the island--and of course, figuring out how to get along (and not kill each other in the process)"--Page 4...