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
When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote THE GREAT GATSBY in the early 1920s, the American Dream was already on the skids. Originally based on the idea that the pursuit of happiness involves not only material success but moral and spiritual growth, the dream had by Fitzgerald's time become increasingly focused on money and pleasure--a phenomenon the high-liv...more
"Once there was a tree ... and she loved a little boy." So begins a story Of unforgettable perception, beautifully written and illustrated by the gifted and versatile Shel Silverstein.Every day the boy would come to the tree to eat her apples, swing from her branches, or slide down her trunk ... and the tree was happy. But as the boy grew older he ...more
In SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, Jane Austen writes about two ways of looking at the world in the personalities of two sisters, Elinor the determinedly practical and Marianne the madly romantic. Forced to live in reduced circumstances with their widowed mother and younger sister, the Dashwood girls must rely on marrying well if they are to survive in the ...more
During their first summer apart, four teenage girls, best friends since earliest childhood, stay in touch through a shared pair of secondhand jeans that magically adapts to each of their figures and affects their attitudes to their different summer experiences.
Jane Austen's last and most melancholy novel was published posthumously in 1818. In PERSUASION, Austen creates a strong, mature, and independent heroine, Anne Elliot. Having foolishly broken off an engagement eight years earlier to Frederick Wentworth, a penniless naval officer, Anne at the age of 27 has remained unmarried--and secretly devoted to ...more
All seven books in the Chronicles of Narnia are now available together in a hardcover volume which includes an essay by C. S. Lewis, "On Three Ways of Writing for Children," where he explains precisely how the magic of Narnia first came to life.