"On board the 'Fidele', a steamboat floating down the Mississippi to New orleans, a confidence man sets out to defraud his fellow passengers. In quick succession he assumes numerous guises--from a legless beggar and a worldly businessman to a collector for charitable causes and a 'cosmospolitan' gentleman. Making very little from his hoaxes, the pleasure of trickery seems an end in itself for this slippery conman. Is his chicanery merely intended...

One fictional Midwestern family is forced to leave their home during the flooding of the Mississippi River in 1993.

"When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive...

"A few months ago, Winslow Houndstooth put together the damnedest crew of outlaws, assassins, cons, and saboteurs on either side of the Harriet for a history-changing caper. Together they conspired to blow the dam that choked the Mississippi and funnel the hordes of feral hippos contained within downriver, to finally give America back its greatest waterway. Songs are sung of their exploits, many with a haunting refrain: "And not a soul escaped alive."...

When a huge white whale gets stuck between the banks of the Mississippi River causing the water to stop flowing, Jean Laffite finds a way to get the river moving again.

On a beautiful June day in 1965, a dozen girls-classmates at a picturesque Blue Ridge women's college-launched their homemade raft (inspired by Huck Finn's) on a trip down the Mississippi. It's Girls A-Go-Go Down the Mississippi read the headline in the Paducah, Kentucky, paper. Thirty-five years later, four of those "girls" reunite to cruise the river again. This time it's on the luxury steamboat, The Belle of Natchez, and there's no publicity....

The Alden children travel on a Mississippi paddle-wheel steamer to visit an old family friend in his cabin near Hannibal, Missouri, and try to discover who is responsible for the mysterious activities near the house.

Life hasn't been easy for Jeanne Bettencourt, a widow approaching thirty and struggling to provide for her eight-year-old daughter. But hope arrives in the form of the Helena Rose, a steamboat she unexpectedly inherits from a distant relative. Jeanne looks forward to a renewed livelihood on the mighty Mississippi, until news comes of another heir, a tough man named Clint Hardin--and a clause in the will that says claimants of the estate must live...

Before meeting Huckleberry Finn, Mary Jane faces deadly illness, treacherous landowners, and swindlers as she goes on her own thrilling journey down the Mississippi in pre-Civil War America.