A Wall Street lawyer hires a pale copyist who one day begins to answer every request with “I would prefer not to.” An American sea captain boards a battered Spanish slave ship off Chile and senses something wrong in the deference of its servants. Between them come the volcanic Galápagos sketches of The Encantadas, a lightning-rod salesman, and a Renaissance bell-founder’s fatal masterpiece.
Melville at the height of his powers in short form, with two of the finest novellas in American literature. Download the free EPUB.