Here is a timeless tale of waterside Britain that has been loved by generations of children and acclaimed as a classic. The story of Mole, Ratty, Badger, and Toad, and their escapades, whether messing about on the river or poop-pooping in Toad's shiny new car, cannot fail to enchant.

Living off crumbs in a dreary attic, Sara Crewe comforts herself with wondrous stories of adventure and fortune, and in the end the stories become true.

Pollyanna, now cured of her crippling spinal injury, and able to walk again, goes to live in Boston with Mrs. Carew, a heart-broken woman searching for her lost nephew. Her Aunt Polly goes abroad with her new Uncle, Dr. Chilton. While in Boston, Pollyanna meets new friends and has several interesting adventures... A startling change in Aunt Polly's and Pollyanna's circumstances require Pollyanna to come up with a workable solution. Pollyanna's solution brings all her new friends from Boston and her old friends in Beldingsville together.

Told from four-year-old Laura's point of view, this story begins in 1871 in a little log cabin on the edge of the Big Woods of Wisconsin. Laura lives in the little house with her pa, her ma, her sisters Mary and Carrie, and their trusty dog, Jack. Pioneer life is sometimes hard for the family, since they must grow or catch all their own food as they get ready for the cold winter. But it is also exciting as Laura and her family celebrate Christmas with homemade toys and treats, do the spring planting, bring in the harvest, and make their first trip into town.

When Pollyanna's father dies, she is sent to live with her only surviving relative, the rich but stern Aunt Polly. Pollyanna's joy soon turns to disappointment when her spinster aunt gives her a cold greeting and tells her she is to stay in the attic. It's not the welcome Pollyanna expected, but she soon regains her spirits, playing the "glad game" her father taught her.

Since its publication in 1952, Charlotte's Web has become one of America's best-loved children's books. For fifty years, this timeless story of the pig named Wilbur and the wise spider named Charlotte who saved him has continued to warm the hearts of readers everywhere. This 1953 Newbery Honor Book comes to life in a delightful unabridged recording, read lovingly by the author himself.

Louis is a Trumpeter Swan, but he has no voice. Leaving his wild and beautiful home, he finds a young human friend, Sam Beaver, who helps him learn to read and write. When he returns to the lake, Louis discovers his education isn't enough: the beautiful swan he loves, Serena, can't read his declarations of love, and he can't trumpet them. Louis' resolution to win the swan of his desire launches him on an adventure that will take him far from home and lead where fate and love have a few surprises in store.

This is the first volume in a bold new series that tells the stories of all peoples, connecting historical events from Europe to the Middle East to the far coast of China, while still giving weight to the characteristics of each country. Susan Wise Bauer provides both sweeping scope and vivid attention to the individual lives that give flesh to abstract assertions about human history. This narrative history employs the methods of "history from beneath" - literature, epic traditions, private letters, and accounts - to connect kings and leaders with the lives of those they ruled.

The excitement, adventure, and magical sense of time and place, outraying from the heart of Robert Louis Stevenson's 18th-century pirate tale, is captured in all its glory by actor David Ian Davies in this new One Voice Recordings release. Be swept away by the story of young Jim Hawkins, caught up in his journey to the Caribbean islands upon a ship with a memorable and explosive crew, and led by the cryptic map from a Dead Man's Chest.

Little Women, closely based on Louisa May Alcott’s own experience of family life, was first published in 1869 and follows the lives of the four March sisters and their mother, "Marmee". With the heartrending story of gentle Beth, the humorous adventures of tomboyish Jo, Meg’s vain attempts to cut a fashionable figure in "society", and the artistic ambitions of the youngest sister Amy, it has never lost its extraordinary power to move and delight.

Everything’s changing for twelve-year-old Marlee. Her brother’s gone off to college and her sister’s moved out of the room they’ve shared since Marlee was born. To Marlee, it feels like her whole world’s falling apart. On top of all that, she’s starting middle school and has to break in new teachers - teachers who don’t yet know Marlee doesn’t talk. At least not until she meets Liz, the new girl at school.

Abandoned by her father and neglected by her self-centered, unstable mother, Sheila McGee cannot wait to escape the drudgery of her mill village life in Northern Ireland. Her classic Irish beauty helps her win the 1941 Linen Queen competition, and the prize money that goes with it finally gives her the opportunity she's been dreaming of. But Sheila does not count on the impact of the Belfast blitz which brings World War II to her doorstep. Now even her good looks are useless in the face of travel restrictions, and her earlier resolve is eroded by her ma's fear of being left alone.

An excerpt from the book: "Sure, it's unusual to have an 18-year-old mother when you're 12. But when you're an orphan and she's your aunt and the only mother you've ever had well, as I explained, it had worked out real well..."

Would you suffer persecution, poverty, and prison for Christ? Would you endure cruel tortures that take your mind and body to the brink of death and beyond? Would you watch your children suffering for their faith and urge them to remain faithful to Christ? Two thousand years of martyrs. For nearly 2000 years, courageous men and women have been tortured and killed because of their confessions of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The New Foxe's Book of Martyrs tells their stories.

Life lessons from New York Times best-selling author and Today show personality Al Roker and his wife, globetrotting ABC news journalist Deborah Roberts. Al Roker and Deborah Roberts have 16 Emmy Awards between them. They have covered everything from the Olympics and the Gulf War to natural disasters and the AIDS crisis in Africa. Now these two married journalists and parents have collaborated on the most personal and important “story” of their lives.

Originally published in the 16th century, this is the classic history of the lives, sufferings, and deaths of the early Christian martyrs. As interesting as fiction, it is written with both passion and tenderness, telling the dramatic story of some of the most thrilling periods in Christian history.

Why do otherwise intelligent individuals form seething masses of idiocy when they engage in collective action? We may think that the Great Crash of 1929, junk bonds of the '80s, and over-valued high-tech stocks of the '90s are peculiarly 20th century aberrations, but Mackay's classic - first published in 1841 - shows that the madness and confusion of crowds knows no limits, and has no temporal bounds.

For many Catholics, the Elizabethan "Golden Age" was an alien concept. Following the criminalization of their religion by Elizabeth I, nearly 200 Catholics were executed, and many more wasted away in prison during her reign. Torture was used more than at any other time in England's history. While some bowed to the pressure of the government and new church, publicly conforming to acts of Protestant worship, others did not - and quickly found themselves living in a state of siege.

Master Italian sculptor, goldsmith, and writer Benvenuto Cellini is best remembered for his magnificent autobiography. In this work, which was actually begun in 1558 but not published until 1730, Cellini beautifully chronicles his flamboyant times. He tells of his adventures in Italy and France, and his relations with popes, kings, and fellow artists.

The profoundly inspiring and fully documented saga of Joan of Arc, the young peasant girl whose "voices" moved her to rally the French nation and a reluctant king against British invaders in 1428, has fascinated artistic figures as diverse as William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Voltaire, George Bernard Shaw, Bertolt Brecht, Carl Dreyer, and Robert Bresson. Was she a divinely inspired saint? A schizophrenic? A demonically possessed heretic, as her persecutors and captors tried to prove?

In Foundation the chronicler of London and of its river, the Thames, takes us from the primeval forests of England's prehistory to the death of the first Tudor king, Henry VII, in 1509. He guides us from the building of Stonehenge to the founding of the two great glories of medieval England: common law and the cathedrals. He shows us glimpses of the country's most distant past - a Neolithic stirrup found in a grave, a Roman fort, a Saxon tomb, a medieval manor house.

The first volume of Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize-winning series, Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Volume I chronicles the early history of Egypt, the Middle East, and Asia.

In AD 66, nationalist and religious revolutionaries in Judaea led a ferocious revolt of the Jewish people against the authority of mighty Rome, culminating in the greatest upheaval and savagery the world had known up to that time. By the end of the conflict seven years later, over one million Jews had perished and tens of thousands were sold into slavery. Until the Holocaust, it remained the greatest tragedy ever endured by a people. How had this once prosperous region been laid low, and by what process did its fratricidal feuds take it down a slippery slope to utter annihilation? Fortunately for us, there was an eyewitness.

The 14th century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and the exquisitely decorated Books of Hours; and on the other, a time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world of chaos and the plague.

Full of larger-than-life characters, stunning acts of bravery, and heart-rending sacrifice, Tried by Fire narrates the rise and expansion of Christianity from an obscure regional sect to the established faith of the world's greatest empire with influence extending from India to Ireland, Scandinavia to Ethiopia, and all points in between.

In 1632, an entire convent in the small French village of Loudun was apparently possessed by the devil. After a sensational and celebrated trial, the convent's charismatic priest Urban Grandier - accused of spiritually and sexually seducing the nuns in his charge - was convicted of being in league with Satan. Then he was burned at the stake for witchcraft. A remarkable true story of religious and sexual obsession, The Devils of Loudun is considered by many to be Brave New World author Aldous Huxley's nonfiction masterpiece.

Here is the tragic, stormy life of Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. Her story is a chronicle of courage and faith, betrayal and treachery - set amidst the splendor, pageantry, squalor, and intrigue of 16th-century Europe. The history of Mary Tudor is an improbable blend of triumph, humiliation, heartbreak, and devotion - and Ms. Erickson recounts it all against the turbulent background of European politics, war, and religious strife of the mid-1500s.

The 19th century was an age that witnessed great progress in many areas of exploration and learning. However, according to J. C. Ryle, it was an age of great ignorance too. What particularly distressed Ryle was the scant knowledge of the English Reformation evident amongst his contemporaries. In this lay a grave danger: one of the reasons so many congregations drift from their evangelical foundations is their sheer ignorance of Christian history, and their lack of understanding of the major doctrinal controversies and why they matter.

This deeply textured dual biography and fascinating intellectual history examines two of the greatest minds of European history - Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther - whose heated rivalry gave rise to two enduring, fundamental, and often colliding traditions of philosophical and religious thought.

Charles Coffin's The Story of Liberty, originally published in 1879, is not America's story alone. It belongs to all those who are enjoying freedom and liberty in any part of the world. And it belongs to all nations that will yet serve Him. As we reach back into the records of history to observe the hand of the Great Author of all liberty, we will find direction for the days ahead and discover the keys we need to understand and interpret the future.

Orphaned at an early age, the young girl Heidi finds a home high in the Swiss Alps with her reclusive grandfather. There, each glorious day is filled with discovery, adventure and the friendship of a gentle goat boy, Peter. But when Heidi is sent away from her mountain paradise to a large, cold city, she is determined to find a way to return to the place she loves. For generations, children around the world have fallen under the spell of this small alpine girl. Heidi is the heartwarming story of an exuberant child’s goodness, courage, and love.

This classic tale of a remarkable, unaffected five-year-old orphan will charm you, just as Heidi charms her fierce, hermit grandfather when she comes to live with him in the Swiss Alps.

Five-year-old orphan Heidi is thrilled to be sent to live with her grandfather in the Alps, where she can play in the mountains amongst the animals. One day however, she is taken away to live with a family in the town. Will she be able to overcome obstacles and find her way back to her beloved grandfather?

When Pollyanna's father dies, she is sent to live with her only surviving relative, the rich but stern Aunt Polly. Pollyanna's joy soon turns to disappointment when her spinster aunt gives her a cold greeting and tells her she is to stay in the attic. It's not the welcome Pollyanna expected, but she soon regains her spirits, playing the "glad game" her father taught her.

Filled with the power of love and the beauty of nature, Heidi is a lyrical tale about a little girl sent to live in the mountains of the Swiss Alps with her grandfather. A grumpy recluse, her grandfather has isolated himself from his fellow townspeople and his church. In very little time, Heidi warms his heart; and she quickly charms the whole town and makes new friends, including young Peter, the goatherd. But when Heidi is sent away again to care for a young girl her own age, she must grow wise beyond her years.

Living off crumbs in a dreary attic, Sara Crewe comforts herself with wondrous stories of adventure and fortune, and in the end the stories become true.

A classic of children's literature, Pollyanna's success led to Porter writing a sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up. Eleven more Pollyanna sequels, known as "Glad Books", were later published. Pollyanna has been adapted for film several times.

Heidi, c'est l'histoire émouvante d'une petite orpheline suisse qui parvient à trouver le bonheur dans son paradis alpin et qui touche son entourage avec son grand cœur et sa noblesse morale.

This classic tale of a handsome, spirited horse, Black Beauty has been a children's favourite for over 100 years. Sewell tells the story of Beauty's life from a young foal through to a working horse.

Sara Crewe is the brightest, richest, and most generous girl in Miss Minchin’s school for girls, and her father gives her everything she might desire. But when her beloved father dies, Sara’s friends and prized possessions are suddenly taken away, and she is banished to the attic and forced to work as a common drudge. Fed only crumbs, she still saves enough to feed her pet rat, and she tells wonderful stories to comfort Becky, the kitchen maid.

Magical retellings of three classic fairy tales, read by Tamsin Greig and Stephen Mangan. In "Aladdin", Aladdin is a tailor's son who dreams of making his fortune and marrying the Sultan's daughter, but is tricked into becoming apprentice to a cunning magician. He needs Aladdin to do a very special job - climb down into a deep, dark cave and fetch an oil lamp...

Written by British-born author Frances Hodgson Burnett and first published in 1905, A Little Princess tells the story of young Sara Crewe, privileged daughter of a wealthy diamond merchant. All the other girls at Miss Minchin's school treat Sara as if she truly were a princess. But when Captain Crewe's fortune is sadly lost, Sara's luck changes. Suddenly she is treated no better than a scullery maid.