Family Classics

When suburban Claudia Kincaid decides to run away, she knows she doesn't just want to run from somewhere she wants to run to somewhere--to a place that is comfortable, beautiful, and preferably elegant. She chooses the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Knowing that her younger brother, Jamie, has money and thus can help her with the serious cash flow problem she invites him along.

Ramona is happy to have a new bedroom all to herself - during the day, at least. It's not as easy to be brave when there might be ghostly, boneless gorillas oozing under the door at night. Then there is the big, mean dog that steals Ramona's shoe on her way to school. Any other first grader might be frightened. But it's going to take more than monsters and dogs to scare this fearless first grader!

Ashley Court: the tumbledown ancestral home of the Ashley family, all blessed with 'the gift' of being able to speak to each other without words. When Bryony Ashley's father dies under mysterious circumstances, his final words a cryptic warning to her, Bryony returns from abroad to uncover Ashley Court's secrets. What did her father's message mean? What lies at the centre of the overgrown maze in the gardens? And who is trying to prevent Bryony from discovering the truth?

Fresh off a breakup, Taylor Manning accepts a yearlong teaching position in Cougar Point, Montana, and plans to focus on herself, avoid men, and return home a changed woman. That’s before she meets Russ Palmer, a local rancher who’s as stubborn as he is handsome. With his old-fashioned attitudes about women, Russ is the last man Taylor could imagine dating, and the feeling seems to be mutual. So why can’t she seem to get him off her mind?

Mary Alice and Grandma Dowdel return for more astonishing, laugh-out-loud adventures when 15-year-old Mary Alice moves in with her spicy grandmother for the year. Her extended visit is filled with moonlit schemes, romances both foiled and founded, and a whole parade of fools made to suffer in unusual (and always hilarious) ways.

The Best Year Ever! That's what Ramona thought the fourth grade was going to be, but things aren't turning out as she hoped. Sure, she has a new best friend named Daisy. But how can she improve her spelling as her teacher insists, or be the role model for her baby sister, Roberta, that Mrs. Quimby expects? Fourth-grade life is full of adventure and challenges, and at the end of it all - a "zeroteenth" birthday to celebrate!

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is back with a brand-new bundle of wonderfully magical cures for any bad habit - from watching too much TV, to picky eating to fear of trying new things. With a little help from her pets, Wag the dog, Lightfoot the cat, Lester the pig, and a trunk full of magnificent powders and potions, she can solve any problem big or small.

As John Baxter makes plans to marry Elaine, one of the Baxters enters into the most trying season of all. During a time of renewed love and hope for the future, the Baxters try to come together to establish the sacred ground of marriage and to chart a course for the future. Memories of times gone by meet with the changes of today in a story that proves only the support of faith and family can take a person into the sunset years of life.

Beloved by children (and the parents lucky enough to share it with them) since it was first published in 1954, Half Magic is the uproarious tale of four siblings who discover a charm that grants exactly half of whatever they wish for--with results that are twice as predictable (and hilarious) as you might expect.

When her father loses his job, Ramona decides to help out. Maybe she could earn a million dollars making a TV commercial, or get her father to stop smoking to save money (and his lungs). She is full of ideas. Some work, some don't. But when her father says he wouldn't trade her for a million dollars, Ramona knows all is right in her world.

Schooldays at St Clare's are never dull for twins Pat and Isabel O'Sullivan in Enid Blyton's much-loved boarding school series. Between 1941 and 1946, Enid Blyton wrote six novels set at St Clare's. This is an audiobook collection of the first three novels.

Professor Godfrey St. Peter is a man in his fifties who has devoted his life to his work, his wife, his garden, and his daughters, and achieved success with all of them. But when St. Peter is called on to move to a new, more comfortable house, something in him rebels. And although at first that rebellion consists of nothing more than mild resistance to his family's wishes, it imperceptibly comes to encompass the entire order of his life.

In Brooklyn's unforgiving urban jungle, Maggie Moore is torn between answering her own needs and catering to the desirous men who dominate her life. Confronted by her quarrelsome Irish immigrant father, the feckless lover who may become her husband, and others, Maggie must learn to navigate a cycle of loss, separation, and hope as she forges her own path toward happiness.

Fanny is married to absent-minded Oxford don Alfred and content with her role as a plain, tweedy housewife. But overnight her life changes when Alfred is appointed English ambassador to Paris. In the blink of an eye, Fanny's mixing with royalty, Rothschilds and Dior-clad wives, throwing cocktail parties and having every indiscreet remark printed in tomorrow's papers.

In preparation for their wedding day, Dayne Matthews and Katy Hart are determined to keep the ceremony a secret from the paparazzi. Their relationship grows closer and stronger as they plan together, but before the wedding, Katy and Dayne face what may be their greatest challenge. Is it possible for Katy to find a place in Dayne's world? Or could the pressures of fame rip away everything they've fought to find together?

Pollyanna, an expert at her favorite "Glad Game" of always looking at the bright side in her numerous trials, is one of the most popular and enduring characters in all of children's literature. As Pollyanna arrives in Beldingsville to live with her strict and dutiful maiden aunt, she exclaims, "Oh, Aunt Polly, I don't know how to be glad enough that you let me come to live with you!"

Ramona feels this is the awkward age - too little to stay by herself after school when her mother is at work, but too big to enjoy playing with pesty Willa Jean at her sitter's house. These days, all Ramona really wants is to twitch her nose and be her mother's little rabbit like she used to be. Can't she be her mother's little girl forever?

Nobody could capture the Phantom. She was the wildest mare on Assateague Island. They said she was like the wind, that the white "map" on her shoulders was her mark of freedom. Paul and Maureen Beebe had their hearts set on owning her. They were itching to buy and tame her; and worked hard to earn the money she would cost. But the roundup men had tried to capture her and for two years she had escaped them.

The winsome Anne Shirley is grown, has married her beloved Gilbert, and is the mother of six frolicsome children. Anne and her family experience some unimaginable events when a strange family moves into a nearby mansion. The Meredith family is comprised of two boys and two girls, a minister father but no mother, and a runaway girl named Mary Vance.

Colm Tóibín's The Heather Blazing details the life of Eamon Redmond, a judge in Ireland's high court, a man remote from his wife, his son and daughter and, at least outwardly, his own childhood. The life he has built for himself, between his work in Dublin and his family's retreat by the sea at Cush, is distinguished by order and by achievement. When, like his beloved coastline, it begins to slip away, he is pulled sharply into the present and finds himself revisiting his past.