The Second Jungle Book

The Second Jungle Book continues the loosely connected stories begun in The Jungle Book, following Mowgli, the boy raised by wolves, through further adventures in the Indian jungle. In "How Fear Came," the animals gather at a drought-shrunken river under a truce and learn the origin of fear itself. In "Red Dog," Mowgli and his wolf pack face an invasion of dholes, a savage wild-dog horde, and turn to the python Kaa for help. "The King's Ankus" follows a jeweled treasure that brings death to everyone who covets it, and "The Spring Running" finds an almost-grown Mowgli torn between the jungle and the human world.

The collection also includes stories with no connection to Mowgli, among them "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat," about a statesman who renounces his position to live as a hermit, and tales set among Inuit hunters and along an Indian riverbank.

Published in 1895 as a sequel to the more famous Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling's collection extends the same blend of animal fable, adventure, and moral parable, drawing on his experience of colonial India.