Classic English Literature For Teens

It is 1642 in the Puritan town of Boston. Hester Prynne has been found guilty of adultery and has born an illegitimate child. In lieu of being put to death, she is condemned to wear the scarlet letter "A" on her dress as a reminder of her shameful act.

Kathryn Barker's Waking Romeo is a spectacularly genre-bending retelling of Romeo & Juliet asking the big questions about true love, fate, and time travel.

The Talisman is Sir Walter Scott's tale of the Crusades, a tale of chivalry, of violence, of virtue, romance, and deceit.

Thomas Hardy brings us an England that once existed but no more. It is rural, traditional, pastoral - a society of mannered conduct that flows like a deep river where powerful currents eddy and swirl. In this powerful novel of love and disillusion, Hardy's heroine is torn between the three men in her life. Passionate but capricious, her romantic involvements have fascinated generations of readers.

The adventures of a charismatic band of animal characters in the English countryside. One of the best-loved stories of all time.

Penny’s father is a newspaper owner being sued for libel in his home base of New York. He sends her on a western ski vacation in order to avoid the legalities, but she manages to gain entrance to a room with a mysterious Green Door, an entrance to an illegal fur importation racket from Canada. The culprits turn out to be those pursuing the libel situation back east. She is threatened with possible death, but not only solves the fur racket but winds up scooping a rival reporter.

Jim Hawkins (who narrates the tale) discovers the long-lost Treasure Map, on which X marks the spot, in the belongings of a dead pirate. He takes it to the local Doctor and Squire who determine to buy a ship, set sail, and recover the treasure from the Island. In a masterstroke of plot, Stevenson has the excited but gullible Squire recruit a crew made up, mostly, of the very crew of Buccaneers and Pirates who plundered this treasure in the first place, under the Captaincy of Flint! They are now led by the one-legged, cunning, and charismatic, Long John Silver.

When Rose Campbell, a shy orphan, arrives at "The Aunt Hill" to live with her six aunts and seven boisterous male cousins, she is quite overwhelmed. How could such a delicate young lady, used to the quiet hallways of a girls' boarding school, exist in such a spirited home? It is the arrival of Uncle Alec that changes everything. Much to the horror of her aunts, Rose's forward-thinking uncle insists that the child get out of the parlor and into the sunshine. And with a little courage and lots of adventures with her mischievous but loving cousins, Rose begins to bloom.

Anne has delayed her college ambitions to stay with Marilla at Green Gables after Matthew's passing. But when Marilla takes in a pair of twins, Anne must juggle her responsibilities at home, at Avonlea School, and at the local improvers' society. She rises to the occasion and meets a favorite author and new kindred spirits along the way.

Hundreds of kilometres without a car, a house, or a person in sight. The dome of clear blue above and the occasional group of roos startling off into the scrub. Then emus, bolting off in a mad panic on the other side. I was finding something that had been lost inside me and I wanted to weave in and out on that straight white ribbon of road for the joy of having found it again. Cross My Heart is the story of Mick and Michelle, chasing a dream, crossing their hearts for the future; a vibrant, passionate, sprawling novel set in outback Australia.

Heidi who has been orphaned, is taken from her alpine home with her beloved grandfather by her less than loving aunt to be a companion for a crippled child of a wealthy family in Frankfurt. They become bosom friends but Heidi becomes ill and has to return home, but when her crippled friend comes to the Alps for a visit, well, we don't want to spoil the story for you.

In the continuing story of Anne Shirley, Anne attends Redmond College in Kingsport, where she is studying for her BA.

"Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (often shortened to "Huck Finn") is a novel written by Mark Twain and published in 1884. It is commonly regarded as one of the "Great American Novels" and is one of the first major American novels written in the vernacular, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, best friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the first great American novels. The book is noted for its innocent young protagonist, its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River, and its sober and often scathing look at the entrenched attitudes, particularly racism, of the time. The journey of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River on their raft may be one of the most enduring images of escape and freedom in all of American literature.

Of The Lion of St. Mark, G.A. Henty wrote: "I have laid my story in the time not of the triumphs of Venice but of her hardest struggle for existence, when she defended herself successfully against the coalition of Hungary, Padua, and Genoa, for never at any time were the virtues of Venice, her steadfastness, her patriotism, and her willingness to make all sacrifice for her independence more brilliantly shown.

Young Jim Hawkins quiet life as the son of an innkeeper changes when an ancient sailor takes up lodging at the inn. When the old man dies without paying his bill, Jim must search the sailor's one possession, a large sea-chest, for payment. He finds a map that is the key to a fortune. This commences a Caribbean treasure hunt, with pirate Long John Silver only steps behind!

Pen's life is about secrets: the secret of the city's spirits, deities and monsters, living just beyond the notice of modern Londoners; the secret of Pen's intricate scars that disfigure her so cruelly; and the most closely guarded secret of all: Parva, her mirror-sister, forged from her reflections in a school bathroom mirror.

Rule by head or rule by heart? Elinor Dashwood is a great believer in "sense," while her exuberant younger sister Marianne feels keenly that only "sensibility" (what today we'd call passion) serves to guide the heart. Through vicissitudes and, in the case of Marianne, outright betrayal by her lover, these two women learn the value in the other's outlook, and thereby prepare themselves for later domestic bliss that is the hallmark resolution of Jane Austen's novels.

Set and written in 1726, This is a marvelously imaginative tale of the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver. He finds himself shipwrecked and the prisoner of captors ranging in size from 6 inches tall to 60 feet tall and of various other persuasions. But this is just the beginning of a story written, strangely enough to satirize the foolishness and vices of modern men as they were perceived at the time. No one, young or old, can ever forget the Lilliputians and the Yahoos that starred in these wonderful and riveting stories of long ago.

Latina Harmen knew she was going to hate Missouri. "There's nothing in Missouri!" she had told her father when he announced they were to spend the summer there. And now she knew she had been 110 percent right. Latina had taken for granted that she would be spending another happy summer vacation with her friends at Periwinkle Cove on the East Coast. After all, her family had spent summers there as long as she could remember.