Pacific Shores is a wide-ranging adventure series centered on the Pacific and Indian Oceans with side trips to Germany, Russia and Mongolia. The reader will find in this adventure novel May`s sidekicks, the Yankee captain Frick Turnerstick, and the English lord Sir John Raffley, both quite funny at times. May`s highly detailed description of Ceylon`s / Sri Lanka`s and Sumatra`s flora is likely based on his personal experience when he traveled as far as Sumatra. His extremely vivid account of a typhoon on a sailing ship in the Pacific must be based on reports of others. And, again and again, it is amazing how this prolific writer, Karl May, weaved fact and fiction together to an exciting narrative.