An instant classic with girls everywhere, LITTLE WOMEN tells the gripping story of the four March sisters--Jo, Amy, Beth, and Meg--as they struggle to grow up in New England, amidst poverty during the Civil War. Based on the author's own interesting childhood, the novel was first printed in two volumes, as initially, Louisa May Alcott didn’t expe...more
Here, for a change, is a fish tale that actually does honor to the author. In fact The Old Man and the Sea revived Ernest Hemingway's career, which was foundering under the weight of such postwar stinkers as Across the River and into the Trees. It also led directly to his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1954 (an award Hemingway gladly accepted, desp...more
Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend's mum with a baseball and believes--correctly, it transpires--that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom. John Irving's novel, which inspired the 1998 Jim Carrey movie Simon Birch, is his most popular book in Britain, and perhaps the oddest...more
Forbidden by her father to indulge in music in any way, a girl on the planet Pern runs away, taking shelter with the planet's fire lizards who, along with her music, opens a new life for her.
When his boy soprano voice begins to change, Piemur is drafted by Masterharper Robinton to help with political work and is sent on missions that lead him into unusual and sometimes dangerous adventures.
The "unwritten" final chapter of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl tells the story of the time between Anne Frank's arrest and her death through the testimony of six Jewish women who survived the hell from which Anne Frank never retumed.
Pursuing her dream to be a Harper of Pern, Menolly studies under the Masterharper learning that more is required than a facility with music and a clever way with words.
The Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story that has lent itself well to operatic and film adaptation. Due to its ambiguous content and narrative skill, the reader is challenged to determine if the protagonist, a nameless governess, is reliably reporting events or instead i...more
Offering an engrossing spin on a time-honored theme--the risky business of making a pact with the devil--this short story is a radiant jewel. It recounts the mercurial lot of Keawe, a Hawaiian who purchases a bottle inhabited by an imp capable of granting any wish. Yet this enticing object holds a dark curse: anyone who dies with it in his possessi...more