Family Classics

Charlotte Dean enjoys nothing more than the solitude of her London flat and the monotonous days of her work at a travel bookshop. But when her younger sister unceremoniously bursts into her quiet life one afternoon, Charlotte's world turns topsy-turvy. Beloved author D. E. Stevenson captures the intricacies of post-World War I England with a light, comic touch that perfectly embodies the spirit of the time. Alternatively heartbreaking and witty, The Young Clementina is a touching tale of love, loss and redemption through friendship.

Each year along the Eastern seacoast, the wild ponies of Assateague Island are driven across a narrow strip of ocean to Chincoteague. There the shaggy, untamed ponies are sold. When young Paul and Maureen Beebe rescue a drowning newborn foal, they take her home to nearby Pony Farm. Now the foal has grown into their free-spirited pony, Misty, and has been the subject of a popular children's book.

Milly-Molly-Mandy lives in a tiny village in the heart of the countryside, where life is full of everyday adventures! Join the little girl in the candy-striped dress as she enjoys her first ever visit to the seaside, goes to a concert and has a picnic with her friends – whatever...

Eight-year-old Elsie Dinsmore is enjoying a blissful Christmas holiday season with her family and friends when a crisis arises that threatens life as she knows it. She believes that obeying a request her father has made would violate her conscience, and she must refuse him. He, in turn, believes Elsie is being willful and disobedient, and he fails to see her refusal as a matter of her deep, abiding faith in God.

As Elsie Dinsmore grows up and becomes a young woman, her family undergoes major changes. Her father, Horace Dinsmore, falls in love and marries sweet Rose Allison, whom Elsie has loved since childhood. Soon two new members, Horace Jr. and Rosebud, join the happy family.

Brave little Rikki Tikki Tavi is a mongoose who finds himself the target of the deadly cobra Naga. Can the courageous little critter protect himself and the family he loves from the fearsome bite of the cobra?

Orphaned at 13, Rose goes to live with her Uncle Alec. Here she meets her seven spirited boy cousins with whom she has home-spun fun, many exciting adventures and in the process learns valuable lessons about life, love and friendship.

Most readers are familiar with Jack London's stories of the frozen northland, such as White Fang and To Light a Fire, but many critics feel he should be equally acknowledged for his fascinating stories of the South Pacific. Here is another remote corner of the world, a background for his magnificently colorful and entertaining Tales of the South Pacific.

Rilla is Anne and Gilbert Blythe’s youngest daughter, an excitable 15-year-old who is unaware of how the world works, and is only interested in having fun. But the world is on the brink of a global war, and soon Rilla’s family and life are turned upside down, as several of her brothers enlist in the army and are sent to fight overseas. The book follows Rilla’s life through the duration of World War I, as she grows up quickly from the responsibilities put on young women in this time.

Hawthorne approached the Romantic notion of the ability of science to destroy art (or beauty) in the form of fictive "horror stories" of biological research out of control. This story is the best of that group. A devoted scientist marries a beautiful woman with a single physical flaw: a birthmark on her face. Aylmer becomes obsessed with the imperfection and his attempts to remove it via his scientific skills, thus rendering his bride perfect.

Truman Capote makes whisky-soaked fruitcake in Alabama; Laurie Lee slides across a frozen pond in Gloucestershire; and Shirley Jackson is outwitted by a wily Santa Claus at the bank. Ghosts haunt the Christmases of Muriel Spark and Elizabeth Bowen, while Dostoyevsky, Daphne du Maurier and Italo Calvino take a cynical view of the season and Selma Lagerlof and Angela Carter celebrate its miracles. Ranging from Cork to Lagos to the Wild West, and from Paris to San Paolo to outer space, this is Christmas as imagined by some of the greatest short-story writers of all time.

A Nebraska native, Claude Wheeler wants to attend the State University but instead lives a typical college life as a Temple College student. However, when his successful father decides to expand the family farm, Claude's reality is changed forever as he's forced to drop out to help realize his father's dream. Later, as war wages on in Europe, he enlists, hoping to escape his dreary fate and find purpose.

In this anthology, discover lesser-known and tender stories and poems from classic authors you know and love. Each selection honors the spirit of the season and celebrates the beauty, mystery, and joy found this time of year.

The classic transformation story by Kafka. A man is transformed into a bug and how everyone deals with the situation from his mother and father, to his employer and paying boarders, and himself.

The heroes and heroines of myth and folklore always have to overcome extraordinary challenges: and more often than not, these challenges involve a giant, a ghost, or a goblin. Jerry Nelson, the voice behind some of the most famous characters in children's television, including Sesame Street's Count von Count, narrates this action-packed collection. His inventive repertoire of growling giants and squeaky goblins will delight young listeners as the drama of the stories sets their imaginations on fire.

Roberta, Peter, and Phyllis were quite happy living in their ordinary red-brick house located in the suburbs. But when their father was called away, the children and their mother were compelled to move to a dark, shabby cottage in the country, and their lives changed more then they ever could have imagined. At first the country seemed lonely and dull. Then one afternoon, a walk led them to a railway tunnel. There they met Perks, the porter, made friends with the kind Station Master, and waved to the Green Dragon train.

This is the charming, human account of the adventures of lovely, wealthy Rose Campbell as she grows into young womanhood. Rose's greatest attraction undoubtedly is that she's such a real girl. She has her trials and disappointments, her temptations and failures. But with the aid of loving counsel and a level head she manages to turn out into a thoroughly lovable, admirable woman.

Williston Bibb Barrett is a rather unusual and inquisitive young Southerner with a special gift for cultivating the possibilities of life. He suffers from occasional bouts of amnesia and disconcerting attacks of déjà vu. He clings to certain old-fashioned notions of behavior, and yet he finds himself constantly impelled to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. And he lives with the secret suspicion that the great world catastrophe that everyone fears will happen has already happened.

A witty retelling of a well-known fairy tale features the adventures of two children who are abandoned in the forest and lured into the clutches of a witch by her confection cottage. By the creator of the George and Martha series.

Lawrence explores love, sex, passion, and marriage through the eyes of two sisters. Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen are the two intelligent, incisive, and observant sisters whose temperamental differences spark an ongoing debate regarding their society and their inner lives. The two very different sisters pursue thrilling, torrid affairs, but their search for more mature emotional relationships reveals some startling information about themselves as well as their lovers, Rupert Birkin and Gerald Crich.