Family Life Classics

It's a hard-knock life for America's favorite orphan! Everyone knows the story of the irrepressible Annie, who lives at Miss Hannigan's orphanage until she beats the odds and finds a new life with the benevolent and wealthy Daddy Warbucks. Annie has enchanted millions of fans from her original comic strip appearance to the hit Broadway musical. Now, with a Tony-nominated revival playing on Broadway, Puffin is reissuing this novelization of the classic story, with a new introduction by Tony and Emmy Award-winning author Thomas Meehan.

Celebrate the very special anniversary of The Tiger Who Came to Tea and share in 50 years of magic with this wonderful audio collection of five classic stories from the inimitable Judith Kerr.

The lovable Jo March, introduced to us in Little Women, is now married with two sons of her own and an adopted family of 12 boys. And she couldn't be happier. Since starting an informal school at Plumfield, Jo and Professor Bhaer provide a haven for poor orphaned boys who thrive on warmth, goodness, and the affectionate interest of the March and Bhaer families.

Rilla Blythe, youngest daughter of Anne, is almost 15 in 1914. As her brothers and friends prepare to go off to battle, the irrepressible Rilla realizes that she will be changed forever and the world will never be the same.

Pregnant with her second child, Martha King finds her marriage to lawyer Austin King more and more frustrating when her husband befriends his young foster cousin, Nora, and, in the process, unwittingly jeopardizes his marriage, career, and place in the community.

This is the story of a boy's adventures growing up in a small town on the banks of the Mississippi river over 100 years ago. The cheerful, adventurous hero plays truant to form a pirate band and, together with his best friend, Huckleberry Finn, finds fun, excitement, and buried treasure along the shores of the great river.

After a tumultuous year in New York City, the Austins are spending the summer on the small island where their grandfather lives. He's very sick, and watching his condition deteriorate as the summer passes is almost more than Vicky can bear. To complicate matters, she finds herself as the center of attention for three very different boys.

If you haven't met a Moomin yet, you're in for the most magical fun! The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Tove Jansson's endearing classic, Moominsummer Madness, read with warmth (and some lively character voices) by the comedian Hugh Dennis. It all began with a hot day in June, and a volcano dropping black ash on Moominmamma's washing. Then a crack appeared in the ground, and Moomintroll's toothbrush slipped straight down into the dark and yawning earth. Then a great flood wave came crashing through Moomin Valley. And that was why the Moomins found themselves a new home, and why they all had so many strange adventures, ones that were odd even by Moomin standards…

Sara Crewe is one of the most vivid figures in children's fiction. Born in India and sent to school in England, she is, at first, treated like a princess by the teacher, Miss Minchin. But when it is evident that Sara is not the possessor of a princess's fortune, she is dispatched to live in the attic and become a servant.

Edna Pontellier is married, twenty-eight, and at a crossroads in her life. She is passionate and artistic but has no one who understands her deep yearnings. She jumps at the chance to spend a summer away from her husband and the heat of New Orleans at a small coastal retreat.

With Father in Washington and Cuffy away visiting a sick cousin, almost anything might happen to the Melendys left behind at the Four-Story Mistake. In the Melendy family, adventures are inevitable: Mr. Titus and the catfish; the villainy of the DeLacey brothers; Rush's composition of Opus Three; Mona's first rhubarb pie and all the canning; Randy's arrowhead; the auction and fair for the Red Cross.

The disregard of a dying woman's bequest, a girl's attempt to help an impoverished clerk, and the marriage of an idealist and a materialist intersect at an estate called Howards End. There, the lives of three families become entangled. As chance brings them together, societal conventions come into question as does the ownership of Howards End. Through the fate of the estate - as well as the lives of the families who are affiliated with it - Forster creates a brilliant parallel to the fate of English society itself.

Schooldays at St Clare's are never dull for twins Pat and Isabel O'Sullivan in Enid Blyton's much-loved boarding school series. In book six, Pat breaks her arm and misses the first weeks of term. Will Pat be upset when new girl Amanda becomes Isabel's new best friend? Expect more mischief at St Clare's!

In the seventh book of the Anne of Green Gables series, Anne and Gilbert Blythe have been happily married for over a decade and have six children. The children take center stage in this story, as they befriend the four children of a new minister in tow, John Meredith. After John’s wife died, he has buried himself into theological studies, and lets his children run free. And though the children are generally kind and loyal, the townsfolk only really notice them on the occasions where they’re getting into trouble.

Schooldays at St Clare's are never dull for twins Pat and Isabel O'Sullivan in Enid Blyton's much-loved boarding school series. In audiobook four, the twins have made it to second form. New girls Gladys and Mirabel have great talents for acting and music, and Elsie, the form's unpopular head girl, learns to be less spiteful. Expect more mischief at St Clare's!

One of American literature's most loved novels, this is a story of family, of hope, of dreams, and of growing up as four devoted sisters search for romance and find maturity in the Civil War-era 19th century New England.

Texas in the early 1900s, its inhabitants still traveling by horseback and barely familiar with the telephone, was on the cusp of an oil boom that, unbeknownst to its residents, would spark a period of dramatic changes and economic growth. In the midst of this transformative time in Southern history, two unforgettable characters emerge and find their fates irrevocably intertwined.

Life is tough and cheerless for Billy Casper, a troubled teenager growing up in the small Yorkshire mining town of Barnsley. Treated as a failure at school, and unhappy at home, Billy discovers a new passion in life when he finds Kes, a kestrel hawk. Billy identifies with her silent strength, and she inspires in him the trust and love that nothing else can, discovering through her the passion missing from his life.

"I will come by train. I will wear a yellow bonnet. I am plain and tall." A heartwarming story about two children, Anna and Caleb, whose lives are changed forever when their widowed papa advertises for a mail-order bride. Sarah Elisabeth Wheaton from Maine answers the ad and agrees to come for a month. Sarah brings gifts from the sea, a cat named Seal, and singing and laughter to the quiet house. But will she like it enough to stay? Anna and Caleb wait and wonder -- and hope. Performed by Glenn Close

The story of Flem Snopes' ruthless struggle to take over the town of Jefferson, Mississippi, this is the second volume of Faulkner's trilogy about the Snopes family, his symbol for the grasping, destructive element in the post-bellum South.