House Classics

Ossman & Steel's Guide to Health or Household Instructor (its original title) is a collection of spells, remedies, and charms. The book draws from the old Pennsylvania Dutch and German powwow healing practices that in turn helped shape Appalachian folk healing, conjure, root work, and many folk healing traditions in America. Jake Richards, author of Backwoods Witchcraft and Doctoring the Devil, puts these remedies in context, with practical advice for modern-day "backwoods" healers interested in using them today.

Traditional values abound in these hilarious stories from Appalachia: friendship, family, orderliness, humor, and delight in an especially inventive practical joke. In "Rainy Weather", a hound dog with more heart than sense wins everyone's admiration. "Uncle Frank Learns to Speak Polish" finds Davis' famous Uncle Frank making the most of a little foreign language. And, in "Uncle Frank Clean Up the Post Office", cleanliness is next to godliness, and it's also next to hilarity.

Four Jack Tales from the Appalachian oral tradition, recorded by a nationally accalimed storyteller. In this collection, Jack has a little trouble adjusting to the workaday world and to personal financial management. Eventually he works hard enough, but his fortunes do not seem to parallel his productivity. Jack finally has to go a bit out of his way to prove himself, meanwhile dealing with a prospective father-in-law who plays hard to get.

"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a narrative short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine before being included in the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. The short story is a work of detective fiction and includes themes of madness, family, isolation, and metaphysical identities.

"What is your favorite story?" is the question children across the country often ask professional storyteller Pleasant DeSpain. As he attempts to answer, his list grows longer and longer, until he confesses he likes them all. An untiring researcher of oral traditions, DeSpain is known for his concise versions of world folktales specifically crafted for retelling.

In the land of moss, magnolias, and bayous, ghost stories suffuse the landscape like mist on a moonlit swamp. Swamp ghosts, hot-tempered villains and tricksters once lived there, and live on today in such blood-chilling stories as the six in this collection.

Growing up in North Carolina, Donald Davis heard stories that came to America through Scots-Irish immigrants about a fellow named Jack who was so real that young Davis thought he was a distant relative or otherside-of-the-mountain neighbor. Now Davis knows that Jack is a universal legendary figure who, by various names, is found in nearly every culture.

Some folk stories endure generation after generation because, although they are not literal, they resound in truths on a human scale. Folktales remind us of wisdom so elemental it is often lost in the rush of everyday life, so that "sometimes common sense makes no sense at all." The six wonder tales on this audiobook are gems of the genre. They have a "long ago and far away" quality.

At the age of eighteen, Lucy Gayheart heads for Chicago to study music. She is beautiful and impressionable and ardent, and these qualities attract the attention of Clement Sebastian, an aging but charismatic singer who exercises all the tragic, sinister fascination of a man who has renounced life only to turn back to seize it one last time. Out of their doomed love affair—and Lucy's fatal estrangement from her origins—Willa Cather creates a novel that is as achingly lovely as a Schubert sonata.

Johnny Appleseed's real name was John Chapman, a native of Massachusetts who lived from 1774 to 1845. It is known that he wandered for 40 years through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana sowing apple seeds, staying one step ahead of the pioneer movement in order to sell seedlings to those who traveled through. Chapman was known for his humanitarian values: his cheerfulness, generosity, and most of all, his respect for, and nearly mystical relationship with, nature.

Orwells visionäres Meisterwerk - meisterhaft gelesen von Christoph Maria Herbst! Als Mitarbeiter des Ministeriums für Wahrheit verbringt Winston Smith seine Tage damit, die Geschichte zugunsten der regierenden Partei umzuschreiben. Aber in seinem Inneren wächst ein Widerstand gegen das totalitäre System, in dem das Leben aufs Strengste reguliert und überwacht wird. Als Winston sich verbotenerweise verliebt, erfährt er, was der Wunsch nach Freiheit kostet. Orwells Klassiker in zeitgemäßer Neuübersetzung mit einem Vorwort geschrieben und gelesen von Robert Habeck!

The assumptions and obsessions that control our daily lives are explored in tantalizing detail by master novelist John Updike in this wise, witty, sexy story. Harry Angstrom - known to all as Rabbit, one of America's most famous literary characters - finds his dreary life shattered by the infidelity of his wife. How he resolves - or further complicates - his problems makes a compelling listen.

One of America's most beloved storytellers tells of spirits that have nurtured her in these four tales: "The Accidental Angel", "Wilbur Martin: God's Maintenance Man", "The Water Lilies", and "Angels in Disguise". Jackie Torrence, a frequent headliner at the National Storytelling Festival, is known to audiences nationwide as The Story Lady. She has performed at the Kennedy Center, Wolftrap, the International Children's Festival, and Lincoln Center.

One of Elizabeth Bowen's most artful and psychologically acute novels, The House in Paris is a timeless masterpiece of nuance and atmosphere, and represents the very best of Bowen's celebrated oeuvre. When eleven-year-old Henrietta arrives at the Fishers' well-appointed house in Paris, she is prepared to spend her day between trains looked after by an old friend of her grandmother's. Henrietta longs to see a few sights in the foreign city; little does she know what fascinating secrets the Fisher house itself contains.

Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus was written by the English author Mary Shelley. It recounts the tale of Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who creates a grotesque, living creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. The first edition was published anonymously in 1818 when Shelley was only 20 years old. Her name finally appeared in the second edition, published in France in 1823. She was supposedly influenced by knowledge of alchemist experiments carried out by Johann Dippel in the Frankenstein Castle in Germany.

A principios del siglo XX, en una pensión de la Riviera, una viuda inglesa ya mayor regala a un anónimo oyente austriaco una confesión imprevista: en su juventud, tuvo un encuentro en un casino de Montecarlo con un joven aristócrata polaco que la llevó a vivir veinticuatro horas de frenesí, a debatirse con las convenciones de la sociedad y a arriesgarlo todo por una pasión pasajera.

Un misterioso edificio construido en una isla en 1924, un diario escrito por un fugitivo encerrado en sí mismo que se enamora de una mujer impasible, y un comentarista que lo desautoriza en distintas notas al pie. Para la mayoría de los lectores —y qué difícil sería desmentirlos—, La invención de Morel es la obra maestra de Adolfo Bioy Casares, una novela con componentes filosóficos tan potente que llegó a influir, especialmente por medio de Lost, sobre el universo aún en boga de las series.

Obra maestra de Balzac, Las ilusiones perdidas cuenta la historia de un joven de provincias con ambiciones artísticas que sueña con triunfar en París. La odisea de Lucien Rubempré desde la inocencia de su Angulema natal hasta el fango del fracaso constituye uno de los periplos narrativos más audaces, embelesadores e imponentes de la narrativa del siglo XIX.

Heidi zählt zu den beliebtesten und bekanntesten Kinderbuchheldinnen und hat selbst über 100 Jahre nach ihrem ersten Erscheinen nichts von ihrem Charme verloren: Zu Beginn der Geschichte wird Heidi von ihrer Tante zu ihrem Großvater auf die Alm gebracht, da sie ein Waisenkind ist. Mit ihrer Natürlichkeit und Warmherzigkeit erobert sie dort das Herz des kauzigen "Alm-Öhi" und verbringt erlebnisreiche Tage mit dem Geissenpeter und seinen Ziegen auf den Alpweiden.

Here is a collection of nine tales of the macabre and the supernatural from the acknowledged master of these genres. They are: "The Black Cat", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", "The Premature Burial", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Oval Portrait", "Berenice", and "Ligeia".