Classics Library

When the children dug a hole in the gravel-pit, they were very surprised at what they found. "It" was a Psammead, a sand-fairy, thousands of years old. It was a strange little thing - fat and furry, and with eyes on long stalks. It was often very cross and unfriendly, but it could give wishes - one wish a day. "How wonderful!" the children said. But wishes are difficult things. They can get you into trouble. An Oxford Bookworms Library reader for learners of English.

On the mend after getting run out of Chicago, professional cardsharp Bill Maynard is hungry for some action...but not nearly as hungry as Joyce Rogers, the tantalizing wife of Bill's latest mark. Together they hatch an ingenious scheme to get rid of her husband. But in life as in poker, the other player sometimes has an ace up his sleeve.

In this novella five friends enter an abandoned library in the city of Detroit and find themselves unable to leave.

Two teenagers fresh out of stir set their sights on what looks like easy money in Dolores Hitchens' Fools' Gold (1958) - and get a painful education in how quickly and drastically a simple plan can spin out of control. The basis for Jean-Luc Godard's film Band of Outsiders, Fools' Gold is a sharply told tale distinguished by its nuanced portrait of a sheltered young woman who becomes a reluctant accomplice and fugitive.

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet's mother.

Kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk! Sal and her mother are picking blueberries to can for the winter. But when Sal wanders to the other side of Blueberry Hill, she discovers a mama bear preparing for her own long winter. Meanwhile Sal's mother is being followed by a small bear with a big appetite for berries! Will each mother go home with the right little one?

Twelve-year-old Ariel is a strange, solitary girl. Recently, Ariel and her mother have seen a ghostly figure in their house. As a result, they are both having dreams that are becoming stranger, yet more and more real. What is the link between this frightening manifestation and the house? Lawrence Block carefully blurs the boundaries between fear and obsession as he steadily increases the suspense. As Ariel's family moves toward tragedy, so does the reader's certainty that a terrible force is at work.

Evil men have come to the land of Tarzan of the Apes, looting and killing as they move. But other evil lurks in a small valley of the Ghenzi Mountains, where the last remnants of an ugly, perverted people dwell in what they call their faith—an ancient belief that came from Rome nearly 2,000 years before. Now they are wicked and many of them are insane. And now they have captured Lady Barbara Collis and mean to use her as a human sacrifice—unless Tarzan arrives in time!

La was in trouble. The high priestess of the Flaming God in the ancient city of Opar—forgotten outpost of Atlantis—had been betrayed by her people and locked in the eon-haunted dungeons until Tarzan came to rescue her. La still loved Tarzan, but Tarzan brought her to his people and then left her. Now, together with a strange woman of Tarzan’s kind, she lies bound in the tent of an Arab slave trader, dreading her certain fate. Meanwhile, Tarzan is beset by a strange band of men who have invaded his land…led by a madman bent on evil subversion!

Somewhere in the heart of Africa, a young archaeologist disappeared in the remote jungle mountains - Erich von Harben, son of an old missionary friend of Tarzan of the Apes. Now the ape-man seeks to rescue the lost scholar. The trail leads to a mysterious valley where Tarzan discovers two surviving outposts of ancient Rome, virtually unchanged by time. And there, Tarzan is thrust into the bloody gladiatorial arena, doomed to face every peril the cruel and corrupt emperor of Castra Sanguinarius can devise to ensure the ape-man’s death.

Betrayed by a band of international conspirators, Tarzan is drugged and left to die in the jungle. But then a quirk of fate delivers him into the hands of the frightful priests of Opar, the last bastion of lost Atlantis. La, High Priestess of the Flaming God, spares his life once again, driven by her hopeless love for the ape-man, only to find her act rewarded by the betrayal of her own people. To save her, Tarzan flees with La into the legendary Valley of Diamonds, while Jad-bal-ja, his faithful golden lion, follows. Ahead lies a land where sentient gorillas rule over servile humans.

A collection of short stories from such favorites as Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Rudyard Kipling are joined by others written anonymously in this anthology which will have you scratching your head and listening just a bit longer to discover the key to the mysteries.

Classic haunted house ghost stories curated by world-renowned filmmaker and horror genre authority John Landis. This beautifully presented, highly collectible anthology features ghost stories that have enthralled, terrified and inspired readers decade after decade. Some are relatively well known; others are long-lost treasures, awaiting rediscovery.

Jimmie John Hall wasn't anything until he was a killer, and Betty Dienhardt wasn't anything until she met Jimmie John Hall. When they get together, sparks fly and bullets follow. The first to go are Betty's parents, but Betty isn't bothered. She only wants to be with her man - the first person to ever make her feel special. They set off on a cross-country spree, killing for gas money and food, killing to swap their car for one the police aren't looking for. As the dragnet draws tighter they only grow closer, riding a road that leads to death because death has surrounded them all the time.

Celebrate summer with The Very Hungry Caterpillar and his friends in this exploration of the season. Young listeners can learn all about seasonal sensory experiences, like listening to noisy bugs, feeling the warm sunshine, smelling the yummy scents of a cookout, and so much more!

A collection of silly tongue-twisters.

Broadway Can Be Murder started out to be a novel based on Johnny Midnight, a TV series which everyone has long since forgotten. Except, of course, that nothing manages to be forgotten in the Internet Age. I, whose job it was to knock out 50,000 words of Johnny Midnightish prose and dialogue, had forgotten when it ran and who was in it, but Google took no time at all to remind me that the title role was played by Edmund O’Brien, and that the series ran during the first nine months of 1960. I was in New York, newly married, living at 110 West 69th Street.

There's no glass slipper in this fairy tale - just a damsel in distress, a bag of cash, and a whole lot of dead bodies. Reporter Ted Lindsay is trying to forget his ex-wife, and New York City's tough streets are just what the doctor ordered. They're also filled with alluring women, but only one catches Ted's eye. Cinderella Sims is not only beautiful, she's on the run and she needs Ted's help. She's got a bag full of cash and some very angry people staking out her apartment.

Struggling folksinger Ellen Cameron can't believe her luck. Not only is the State Department sponsoring her trip to West Berlin, but her agent has arranged for her to tour Ireland. It's just the break she needs. And better yet, she's meeting the friendliest and most interesting people on her trip, from a kind priest on the plane to a handsome American studying abroad.

Dave and Jill Wade come to Pennsylvania, the ink still wet on their marriage license, expecting three weeks of lakeside honeymooning bliss. All is lovely until gunshots shatter their first night together. Killers have come for the man in the next cabin, and afterward they decide to silence the happy couple, battering Dave and dragging his virgin bride into the dead man's bedroom. The Wades say nothing to the police, but afterward take a second set of vows: death for the men who ruined their honeymoon.