Family Life Classics

For anyone who loves sailing and adventure, Arthur Ransome's classic Swallows and Amazons series stands alone. Originally published over a half-century ago, the twelve books are still eagerly read by children and adults alike – by all those captivated by the world of adventure and imagination. Such longevity is not only due to Ransome’s unparalleled gift of storytelling, but also his championing of qualities such as independence and initiative; virtues that appeal to every generation, whether young or old.

Meet Zezé—Brazil’s naughtiest and most loveable boy, his talent for mischief matched only by his great kindness. When he grows up he wants to be a ‘poet with a bow-tie’, but for now he entertains himself playing pranks on the residents of his family’s poor Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood and inventing friends to play with. That is, until he meets a real friend, and his life begins to change.

First published in 1873, The Gilded Age is both a biting satire and a revealing portrait of post-Civil War America - an age of corruption when crooked land speculators, ruthless bankers, and dishonest politicians voraciously took advantage of the nation's peacetime optimism. With his characteristic wit and perception, Mark Twain and his collaborator, Charles Dudley Warner, attack the greed, lust, and naiveté of their own time in a work that endures as a valuable social document and one of America's most important satirical novels.

Con estas palabras empieza la novela ya legendaria en los anales de la literatura universal, una de las aventuras literarias más fascinantes de nuestro siglo. Millones de ejemplares de Cien años de soledad leídos en todas las lenguas y el Premio Nobel de Literatura coronando una obra que se había abierto paso «boca a boca» - como gusta decir al escritor - son la más palpable demostración de que la aventura fabulosa de la familia Buendía-Iguarán, con sus milagros, fantasías, obsesiones....

Big sister Beezus Quimby tries to be patient with her four-year-old little sister, Ramona, but it isn't easy, not when Ramona powders her nose with marshmallows and invites her nursery school class to a party without telling her family. Sometimes Beezus doesn't like Ramona, but the girls are sisters and that means they will always love each other - just not every single minute.

Little Women is the story of a wife and her four daughters living in genteel poverty in the environs of Boston while the father is away as a chaplain in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Sarah, Plain and Tall, Skylark, and Caleb's Story, all unabridged and all performed beautifully by Academy Award-winning actress Glenn Close, make up this exquisite audio collection.

First published in monthly parts from March 1852 to September 1853, this novel follows the fortunes of three pedestrian characters; Esther Summerson, Ada Clare, and Richard Carstone. The story they tell embondies Dickens' merciless indictment of the Court of Chancery and its bungling, morally corrupt handling of the endless case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, giving the novel its scope and meaning.

As Elsie Dinsmore grows up and becomes a young woman, her family undergoes major changes. Her father, Horace Dinsmore, falls in love and marries sweet Rose Allison, whom Elsie has loved since childhood. Soon two new members, Horace Jr. and Rosebud, join the happy family.

On a desperate journey, two runaways meet and join forces. Though they are only looking to escape their harsh and narrow lives, they soon find themselves at the center of a terrible battle. It is a battle that will decide their fate and the fate of Narnia itself.

Rilla, almost 15, can't think any further ahead than going to her very first dance at the Four Winds lighthouse and getting her first kiss from handsome Kenneth Ford. But undreamed-of challenges await the irrepressible Rilla when the world of Ingleside becomes endangered by a far-off war. Her brothers go off to fight, and Rilla brings home an orphaned newborn in a soup tureen. She is swept into a drama that tests her courage and leaves her changed forever.

The winsome Anne Shirley is grown, has married her beloved Gilbert, and is the mother of six frolicsome children. Anne and her family experience some unimaginable events when a strange family moves into a nearby mansion. The Meredith family is comprised of two boys and two girls, a minister father but no mother, and a runaway girl named Mary Vance.

In rural North Carolina, in 1951, despite parental reassurances, a typhoid shot hurt. It hurt even more when the children saw who would be administering the shot: Miss Winnie, a large, dictatorial nurse who had been "especially built by the nursing school so she would never blow away in a hard wind".

Paddington Bear always manages to find himself in tricky situations, sometimes extraordinary situations. Like the time he had a difficult encounter with a policeman or when he found himself in deep water with a newspaper reporter. But since arriving from his native Peru after an earthquake Paddington has always felt at home with the Brown family who found him on Paddington station.

The five Pepper children - Ben, Polly, Dave, Joel, and Phronsie - have secret plans to surprise their mother on her birthday. But how can they make those plans come true without any money? Ever since Mr. Pepper died, the Peppers have been so poor that they can’t even afford Christmas. Through all their misadventures, however, the Peppers are rich in love. From measles to monkeys, from brown bread to birthday cakes, their little house always rings with laughter and hope. Then, just when terrible tragedy nearly strikes the five little Peppers, a mysterious boy named Jasper King stumbles into their lives.

No one would accuse 11-year-old Caddie Woodlawn of being dainty and ladylike. In spite of her mother’s best efforts, Caddie is as wild as the wind, playing freely and rambunctiously with her two brothers in the Wisconsin backwoods. There are rafts to build and trees to climb and pranks to play. Caddie especially likes to watch her friend Indian John build birchbark canoes at the river. Every day seems wide with possibility - as wide as the frontier. But living on the edge of civilization has its risks, too....

Ramona's job is to be nice to fussy Mrs. Kemp, who watches her while her mother works. If Mrs. Quimby didn't work, Mr. Quimby couldn't return to college. On top of all that, third grade isn't turning out as Ramona expected, even though she enjoys her class's new reading program, D.E.A.R. Danny the Yard Ape teases her, and, on one horrible day, she throws up - at school. Being eight isn't easy, but it's never dull!

Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder.

A Signature Performance: Oscar nominee and passionate vegan Casey Affleck highlights the more-relevant-than-ever issues of business ethics and food production in Upton Sinclair’s meatpacking industry bombshell.

The first thing every listener will want to know is whether Anne Shirley appears in these stories of Avonlea and Spencervale. She certainly does. As a matter of fact, page one starts off in this manner: "Anne Shirley was curled up on the window seat of Theodora Dix's sitting room one Saturday evening, looking dreamily afar at some fair starland beyond the hills of sunset. Anne was visiting for a fortnight of her vacation."