New England Fiction

Charles Dickens was a writer and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND: The shabbiness of our English capital, as compared with Paris, Bordeaux, Frankfort, Milan, Geneva almost any important town on the continent of Europe I find very striking after an absence of any duration in foreign parts.

Sarah Orne Jewett's fiction depicts, with humor and dignity, the lives and values of the people of New England before the turn of the century. This unabridged collection of four of her best stories, beautifully performed in the dialect of Southern Maine by Tana Hicken, presents the spirit and the humor of a place and an era long past. "Martha's Lady" is the wonderful story of the bond that develops between two young women - one a visiting cousin, the other an awkward and newly employed maid.

The well-meaning and meddlesome Mr. and Mrs. Aden want nothing more than to protect their only daughter, Hannah. After her childhood kidnapping in Somalia and a final showdown in Italy against the monster responsible, 19-year-old Hannah just wants back the life stolen from her.

There's more trouble on the farm, but Duck has nothing to do with it, for once. This time the trouble is a four-ounce puff of fluff who just won't go to sleep, and whose play-with-me peeps are keeping the whole barnyard awake with him. How do you get a baby duck to hit the hay? Poor Farmer Brown will find out - and Duck might just find himself in trouble after all.