Also of interest ... tales of the high seas

Six Novels in Woodcuts

by Lynd Ward

(Library of America, $70)

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This collection of artist Lynd Ward’s six novels, each told in a series of woodcut engravings, begins with the tale of an artist who finds a magical paintbrush after being lost at sea, said Sarah Boxer in Slate.com. Gods’ Man, from 1929, was “the first wordless novel published in America” and set the bar for generations of graphic novelists. Assembled in a “gorgeous deluxe edition,” Ward’s bleak fables work as well as the story of one artist’s admirable struggle to master the challenges of a difficult medium.

The Hard Way Around

by Geoffrey Wolff

(Knopf, $26)

Geoffrey Wolff’s new biography charts the “restless, quixotic career” of the man who, in 1898, became the first to sail alone around the world, said Heller McAlpin in The Christian Science Monitor. Wolff, who has a “predilection” for writing about “difficult men,” has found a perfect subject in Joshua Slocum, a young ship’s captain who endured innumerable tempests and mutinies both figurative and literal before setting sail on his defining three-year voyage.

Atlantic

by Simon Winchester

(Harper, $28)

Chronicling the history of the Atlantic Ocean from its origins some 370 million years ago seems a task vaster than the Atlantic itself, said The Economist. But historian Simon Winchester proves up to the task, showing how this ocean’s particular characteristics have influenced trade, changed the outcome of wars, and seduced many an explorer. The author of Krakatoa is particularly good on stories about “heavyweight” seafarers such as Christopher Columbus and Lord Nelson.

The Passages of H.M.

by Jay Parini

(Doubleday, $27)

Jay Parini has guts, said Christopher Benfey in The New Republic. In his latest historical novel, Parini inhabits the mind of Herman Melville as the peripatetic writer sails the oceans on a whaling ship, a naval vessel, and a steamer to the Holy Land. Even after he publishes Typee and Moby-Dick, Parini’s Melville is a man “torn between the allure of travel and the counterbalancing security of home.” When Melville publishes Moby-Dick, to little acclaim, his wife urges him: “Stand by your whale!”