Classic English Literature For Teens

Two wealthy gentlemen decide to give a poor stranger a million-pound bank note to see what he will do with it. The results are very unexpected.

Young David Balfour is the rightful heir but his uncle has other plans. This story recounts Master Balfour's escape on the high seas and his adventures making his way back across Scottish Highlands.

Since its publication in 1883, Treasure Island has remained one of the great tales of the sea. The story is told through the eyes of young Jim Hawkins, who first hears the tales of buried pirate treasure while working in his father's tavern. Once he actually meets some of those pirates, the action moves from the tavern, to the the high seas, and then to a secret island. A true adventure classic.

The Capulets and the Montagues have some deep and essential differences. Blood differences. Of course, the Capulets can escape their vampire fate, and the Montagues can try not to kill their undead enemies. But at the end of the day, their blood feud is unstoppable. So it's really quite a problem when Juliet, a vampire-to-be, and Romeo, the human who should be hunting her, fall desperately in love. What they don't realize is how deadly their love will turn out to be - or what it will mean for their afterlives....

Brave little Rikki Tikki Tavi is a mongoose who finds himself the target of the deadly cobra Naga. Can the courageous little critter protect himself and the family he loves from the fearsome bite of the cobra?

This science-fiction classic is the story of a Professor, his nephew, and their quest for the secrets contained at the earth's core. Led by Hans, their Icelandic guide, the two explore the mysteries of a never-before-seen subterranean world.

First written in 1902, this is one of Edith Nesbit's best loved children's stories. It all begins when a group of five children – Robert, Anthea, Cyril, Jane, and their baby brother, the Lamb - move from London to the countryside of Kent. While playing in a gravel pit, they discover a rather grumpy, ugly and occasionally malevolent sand-fairy known as the Psammead who is compelled to grant one wish of theirs per day. The effects of each wish last until sundown. All the wishes granted to the children go hilariously wrong.

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.

As half-angel Willow battles her parasitic otherworldly kin, romance and tension heat up to a climactic series finale. In the devastated remains of the world, millions now live in Edens provided by the angels that have all but enslaved the human race. As mastermind Raziel's stranglehold on humanity tightens, Willow, Alex, and the rest of the team race to recruit new Angel Killers and form a line of defense. But then a shattering revelation sends Alex on a doomed journey, leaving Willow and Seb hanging in the balance.

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.

A surfing, boy-crazy teenager comes of age in the summer of 1957 in this classic novel that inspired movies, television, and created an American pop culture icon. This is Franzie, part Holden Caulfield, part Lolita. The guys call her Gidget—short for girl midget. Based on the experiences of his daughter, Frederick Kohner's novel became an international sensation with an irrepressible heroine whose voice still echoes every thrill, every fear, and every hope that every teenager ever had about growing up.

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

Ten superbly narrated stories that help explain America by America's best writers.

Five years after Anne Shirley came to the town of Avonlea, she feels (a little) more grown up, but she's still the same skinny, red-headed orphan Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert took in. After putting her dream of attending Redmond College on hold so she can help Marilla with the farm, Anne doubts she has many adventures ahead of her. But even in plain old Avonlea, her life proves to be anything but ordinary.

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.

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.

One of the first true novels in the English language, Robinson Crusoe is the famous adventure of a castaway and his desert-island companion, Friday.

Hamlet's father has just died. By the time they've filled in the grave, his mother has remarried. Hamlet suspects foul play, and it's troubling his spirit. Or maybe he was always troubled. Ophelia is in love with him. His best friend Horatio can't work him out. Then, on a cold, still night, Hamlet meets the ghost of his father.