Family Life Classics

Bee Ridgway’s wildly inventive debut novel, The River of No Return, blends romance, conspiracy, and time travel for a tale sure to intrigue listeners. When soldier and aristocrat Nick Falcott is sent from a Napoleonic battlefield in 1815 to modern-day London, he never expects to go back - until the Guild calls for him. Returning home as if from the dead, Nick reunites with his lost love, Julia Percy, and enlists her help in finding a mysterious object known as the Talisman.

Mr. Watson is a widowed and ailing clergyman with two sons and four daughters. The youngest daughter, Emma, the heroine of the story, has been brought up by a wealthy aunt and is consequently better educated and more refined than her sisters. But after her aunt contracted a foolish second marriage, Emma has been obliged to return to her father's house. There she is chagrined by the crude and reckless husband-hunting of two of her sisters, Penelope and Margaret.

E.M. Forster's Howards End is a vivid portrait of London's golden age, before World War I forever changed its values and culture. Forster brings the great city's upper classes to life, detailing their grandiose spending habits, popular fads, Monet and Debussy, the rise of feminism, and the beginnings of urbanization. More than a mere idealization of pre-war London, Howards End provides insightful commentary on the rapid societal changes that occurred at the onset of the 20th century. Masterfully blending the stories of three vastly different groups of people - the independently wealthy, educated Schlegels; the nouveau riche Wilcoxes; and the ambitious but struggling Leonard Bast - Forster weaves a wonderfully rich, unforgettably poignant novel.

Austen’s heroine Elizabeth Bennet deals with the issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England. Austen at her wittiest.

Published in 1854, the story describes class conflict in Victorian England and serves as a powerful critique of the social injustices that plagued the Industrial Revolution. Charles Dickens (1812 - 9 June 1870) is arguably the greatest novelist England ever produced. His innate comic genius and shrewd depictions of Victorian life - along with his memorable characters - have made him beloved by readers the world over.

Six children decide that the only way to restore the fortunes of their family is to go out and do it themselves. They produce a series of madcap schemes and one after another try them out with varying degrees of success, most resulting in trouble rather than riches. But then one scheme begins to look more promising than the rest.

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.

One of Elizabeth Bowen's most artful and psychologically acute novels, The House in Paris is a timeless masterpiece of nuance and atmosphere, and represents the very best of Bowen's celebrated oeuvre. When eleven-year-old Henrietta arrives at the Fishers' well-appointed house in Paris, she is prepared to spend her day between trains looked after by an old friend of her grandmother's. Henrietta longs to see a few sights in the foreign city; little does she know what fascinating secrets the Fisher house itself contains.

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.

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.

This exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach.

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.

Marghanita Laski’s novel Little Boy Lost is as enthralling as it is heart-wrenching. A man grapples with questions of emotional responsibility, fatherhood, and memory. Laski describes a much-changed France, struggling to rebuild its morale after the ruin caused by wartime bombing and...

Charles Dickens is known not only for his novels, but also for his short stories, particularly "A Christmas Carol." In the latter genre, interestingly, these stories had a powerful commercial impulse, for they were serialized in magazines at the Christmas season.

At one time, Jacob MacCallum had it all: wealth, a wonderful family, and a position as one of the most respected businessmen in Chicago. For the past 20 years, he's lived in an alcohol-induced haze, riddled with guilt for his role in the untimely death of his wife. Estranged from his children and penniless, he embarks on a journey to find his family and seek their forgiveness. On his path to redemption, he encounters a young girl whose friendship might be the key to reuniting the MacCallum family just in time for Christmas.

A moving musical score helps bring to life this unforgettable story from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.

“To help mother”: that was the goal of each and every one of the five Pepper children. Yet even as “Mamsie” struggles hard to feed and educate her brood, she still manages to fill the house with joy. The adventures of this poor but loving family - Ben, Polly, Joel, Davie, and the adored youngest, Phronsie - have charmed young listeners for more than a century. Overflowing with warmth, suspense, and many delightful surprises, this classic remains as compelling as ever.

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.

Written in classic Alcott style, we see how the boys struggle to overcome their many flaws, in the end learning life's lessons the hard way. Just as the March girls did, each boy must learn to deal with death, love, heartbreak, and the consequences of their actions. Audiences will feel pain and joy alongside each young man as he completes his life journey and fulfills his dreams in this classic conclusion to one of America's most beloved series.

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.