In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organisation called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be. Lionel Trilling said of Orwell's masterpiece "1984 is a profound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating book. It is a fantasy of the political future, and like any such fantasy, serves its author as a magnifying device for an examination of the present." Though the year 1984 now exists in the past, Orwell's novel remains an urgent call for the individual willing to speak truth to power.
Mark Twain's witty, satirical tale of childhood rebellion against hypocritical adult authority. Mark Twain's story of a boy's journey down the Mississippi on a raft conveyed the voice and experience of the American frontier as no other work had done before. When Huck escapes from his drunken, abusive 'Pap' and the 'sivilizing' Widow Douglas with runaway slave Jim, he embarks on a series of adventures that draw him to feuding families and the trickery of the unscrupulous 'Duke' and 'Dauphin'. Beneath the exploits, however, are more serious undercurrents - of slavery, adult control and, above all, of Huck's struggle between his instinctive goodness and the corrupt values of society which threaten his deep and enduring friendship with Jim.
Alice sits on a riverbank on a warm summer day, drowsily reading over her sister's shoulder, when she catches sight of a White Rabbit in a waistcoat running by her. The White Rabbit pulls out a pocket watch, exclaims that he is late, and pops down a rabbit hole. Alice follows the White Rabbit down the hole and her adventure begins.
When twenty-year-old Paul Baumer and his classmates enlist in the German army during World War I, they are full of youthful enthusiam. But the world of duty, culture, and progress they had been taught to believe in shatters under the first brutal bombardment in the trenches. Through the ensuing years of horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principle of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against one another. Erich Maria Remarque's classic novel not only portrays in vivid detail the combatants' physical and mental trauma, but dramatizes as well the tragic detachment from civilian life felt by many upon returning home.
The classic text of the diary Anne Frank kept during the two years she and her family hid from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic is a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit.
Faced with the difficulties of growing up and choosing a religion, a twelve-year-old girl talks over her problems with her own private God.
"A bear on Paddington Station?" said Mrs Brown in amazement. "Don't be silly - there can't be." Paddington Bear had travelled all the way from darkest Peru when the Brown family first met him on Paddington station. Since then their lives have never been quite the same... for ordinary things become quite extraordinary when a bear called Paddington is involved.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison's Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past. One of The Atlantic 's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe's house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe's terrible secret explodes into the present. Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison's unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature.
This brilliant and faithful rendering of the Anglo-Saxon epic has been revamped for the contemporary reader by Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney. Composed toward the end of the first millennium, Beowulf is the elegiac narrative of the Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel and, later, from Grendel's mother.
'I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.' Los Angeles Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wheelchair-bound General Sternwood to discover who is blackmailing him. A broken, weary old man, Sternwood just wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. However, with Sternwood's two wild, devil-may-care daughters prowling LA's seedy backstreets, Marlowe's got his work cut out. And that's before he stumbles over the first corpse.
The domesticated life of a powerful St. Bernard-Shepherd mix named Buck is quickly turned on end when he is stolen away from his master and put to work as a sled dog in Alaska. His once life of luxury turns into a life of survival and adaptation as he learns the ways of the wilderness. Set in the Klondike region of Canada during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, The Call of the Wild showcases the transformation of a canine as he learns to adapt to what life has given him, fair or not.
Charlotte's Web is the classic children's story by E B White. The tale of how a little girl named Fern, with the help of a friendly spider, saved her pig Wilbur from the usual fate of nice fat little pigs.
Set in the deep American South between the wars, THE COLOR PURPLE is the classic tale of Celie, a young black girl born into poverty and segregation. Raped repeatedly by the man she calls 'father', she has two children taken away from her, is separated from her beloved sister Nettie and is trapped into an ugly marriage. But then she meets the glamorous Shug Avery, singer and magic-maker - a woman who has taken charge of her own destiny. Gradually Celie discovers the power and joy of her own spirit, freeing her from her past and reuniting her with those she loves.
A compilation of six volumes of the author's poetry: Chicago poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918), Smoke and steel (1920), Slabs of the sunburnt West (1922), Good morning, America (1925), and The people, yes (1936); and a new section of 74 poems not previously collected.
This richly illustrated anthology gathers together classic short stories from masters of supernatural fiction including M. R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu and Arthur Machen, alongside lesser-known voices in the field including Eleanor Scott and Margery Lawrence, and popular writers less bound to the horror genre, such as Thomas Hardy and E. F. Benson. These are damnable tales, selected and beautifully illustrated by Richard Wells. They stalk the moors at night, the deep forests, cornered fields and dusky churchyards, the narrow lanes and old ways of these ancient places, drawing upon the haunted landscapes of folk-horror - a now widely used term first applied to a series of British films from the late 1960s and 1970s: Witchfinder General (1968), Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973). But as this collection shows, writers of uncanny fiction were dabbling in the dark side of folklore long before. These twenty-two stories take the reader beyond the safety and familiarity of the town into the isolated and untamed wilderness. Unholy rites, witches' curses, sinister village traditions and ancient horrors that lurk within the landscape all combine to remind us that the shiny modern, urban world might not have all the answers...
World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser weapon, he dreamed of owning a live animal - the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life. Then Rick got his chance: the assignment to kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But in Deckard's world things were never that simple, and his assignment quickly turned into a nightmare kaleidoscope of subterfuge and deceit-- and the threat of death for the hunter rather than the hunted...
Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which book paper spontaneously catches fire and burns. It is a futuristic novel describing a time when the government has ordered that all books be burned.
Join Frog and Toad in a series of fun adventures about mindfulness, self reflection, and friendship.
How do you convince your friend to try your favourite dish when he just keeps telling you he does not like it? Dr Seuss's amusing story answers that question.
Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead, a religious totalitarian state in what was formerly known as the United States. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford - her assigned name, Offred, means 'of Fred'. She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged. Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire. As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks, Offred must navigate through the terrifying landscape of torture and persecution in the present day, and between two men upon which her future hangs. Masterfully conceived and executed, this haunting vision of the future places Margaret Atwood at the forefront of dystopian fiction.
The Haunting of Hill House is a chilling story of the power of fear. 'Shirley Jackson's stories are among the most terrifying ever written' -- Donna Tartt. Alone in the world, Eleanor is delighted to take up Dr Montague's invitation to spend a summer in the mysterious Hill House. Joining them are Theodora, an artistic 'sensitive', and Luke, heir to the house. But what begins as a light-hearted experiment is swiftly proven to be a trip into their darkest nightmares, and an investigation that one of their number may not survive.
Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey 'there and back again'. They have a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon...
Eldest of three sisters in a land where it is considered to be a misfortune, Sophie is resigned to her fate as a hat shop apprentice until a witch turns her into an old woman and she finds herself in the castle of the greatly feared wizard Howl.
The dead wreak revenge on the living, paintings come alive, spectral brides possess mortal men and a priest devours human flesh in these chilling Japanese ghost stories retold by a master of the supernatural. Lafcadio Hearn drew on the phantoms and ghouls of traditional Japanese folklore - including the headless 'rokuro-kubi', the monstrous goblins 'jikininki' or the faceless 'mujina' who stalk lonely neighbourhoods - and infused them with his own memories of his haunted childhood in nineteenth-century Ireland to create these terrifying tales of striking and eerie power. Today they are regarded in Japan as classics in their own right.
Known for his looks and charm, a young man obsessed with wealth and status will stop at nothing to get what he wants. He sets his sights on a beautiful and innocent college student named Dorothy, intent on marrying her for her family’s money. But when Dorothy becomes pregnant, his careful plans start to unravel and he begins to take cold, calculating, and drastic measures.
'I spring from the pages into your arms' Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass stands as one of the most influential and innovative literary works of the last two hundred years. Widely credited as the originator of free verse in English, Whitman abandoned the rules of traditional poetry--breaking the standard metred line, discarding the obligatory rhyming scheme, and using the emerging American vernacular with the formal precedents of the past while adopting the vernacular rhythms of his emergent American democracy.
First Lucy, then Edmund, Susan, and Peter discover that through the wardrobe lies the enchanted land of Narnia. This classic story is now brought vividly to life through glowing full-page color illustrations in the most exciting and magical adventure ever written.
The sun-kissed prairie stretches out around the Ingalls family, smiling its welcome after their long, hard journey across America. But looks can be deceiving as they soon find that they must share the land with wild bears and Indians. Will there be enough room for all of them?
All grown-ups were children once (but most of them have forgotten). A pilot who has crash landed in the desert awakes to see an extraordinary little boy. 'Please,' asks the stranger, 'will you draw me a little lamb!' Baffled by the little prince's incessant questioning, the pilot pulls out his pencil, and starts to draw. As the little prince's curiosity takes them further on their journey together, the pilot is able to piece together an understanding of the tiny planet from which the prince has come and of his incredible travels across the universe. First published in 1943, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry has been translated into more than 250 languages, becoming a global phenomenon. Heart-breaking, funny and thought-provoking, it is an enchanting and endlessly wise fable about the human condition and the power of imagination.
Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with ne-er do well Floyd Thursby. But when Spade's partner Miles Archer is murdered while on Thursby's trail, Spade finds himself both hunter and hunted: can he track down the mythical jewel-encrusted Falcon, a treasure worth killing for, before the Fat Man and how far can he trust the sexy Miss Wonderley? Dashiel Hammett's noir classic is written in sharp terse prose that gives a cinematic vividness to the characters and the milieu.
Many, many adults name this book as their favorite Little Golden Book. Generations of kids have interacted with lovable, furry old Grover as he begs the reader not to turn the page--for fear of a monster at the end of the book.
A collection of 9 realistic and perceptive short stories that deal mainly with sensitive and troubled adolescents and children
Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the tale of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. This story of heroic endeavour won Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. It stands as a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements.
T.H. White's masterful retelling of the Arthurian legend is an abiding classic. The Once and Future King, contains all four books about the early life of King Arthur (The Sword in the Stone , The Witch in the Wood , The Ill-Made Knight and The Candle in the Wind). Exquisite comedy offsets the tragedy of Arthur's personal doom as White brings to life the major British epic of all time with brilliance, grandeur, warmth and charm.
In Jane Austen's most popular novel, Elizabeth Bennet and eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy clash instantly. She finds him arrogant, conceited, and indifferent, disliking him even more when she discovers he has interfered in the relationship between his friend Bingley and Elizabeth's older sister Jane. In this classic comedy of misdirected manners, Jane Austen shows readers how first impressions can't always be trusted.
Rosemary Woodhouse and her struggling actor husband Guy move into the Bramford, an old New York City apartment building with an ominous reputation and only elderly residents. Neighbours Roman and Minnie Castavet soon come nosing around to welcome the Woodhouses to the building; despite Rosemary's reservations about their eccentricity and the weird noises that she keeps hearing, her husband starts spending time with them. Shortly after Guy lands a plum Broadway role, Rosemary becomes pregnant and the Castavets start taking a special interest in her welfare, and as the sickened Rosemary becomes increasingly isolated, she begins to suspect that the Castavets' circle is not what it seems...
Everybody at Misselthwaite Manor agrees that Mary Lennox is the most disagreeable child they have ever met. Pale, selfish and spoilt, the ten-year-old orphan has been sent from India to her uncle's estate and she is determined to hate everything about it. But the isolated house on the Yorkshire moors holds secrets that Mary cannot resist exploring: pitiful crying that echoes down the corridors at night and a hidden walled garden. When a robin leads Mary to the buried key, not only is the garden unlocked, but also her heart. And as the garden blooms, for the first time in her life, Mary discovers friendship. This is where the magic begins . . .
Tarzan first came swinging through the jungle in the pages of a pulp-fiction magazine in 1912, and subsequently in the novel that went on to spawn numerous film and other adaptations. In its pages we find Tarzan's origins: how he is orphaned after his parents are marooned and killed on the coast of West Africa, and is adopted by an ape-mother. He grows up to become a model of physical strength and natural prowess, and eventually leader of his tribe. When he encounters a group of white Europeans, and rescues Jane Porter from a marauding ape, he finds love, and must choose between the values of the jungle and civilization. The Tarzan of popular imagination bears only limited resemblance to Edgar Rice Burroughs's creation, and the complex backdrop of colonial appropriation, literary heritage, and nostalgic yearning from which he emerged.
This stirring tale of courage and survival against the odds has become one of the best-loved animal adventures of all time. 'We've got to go away before it's too late.' Fiver could sense danger. Something terrible was going to happen to the warren - he felt sure of it. So did his brother Hazel, for Fiver's sixth sense was never wrong. They had to leave immediately, and they had to persuade the other rabbits to join them. And so begins a long and perilous journey of a small band of rabbits in search of a safe home. Fiver's vision finally leads them to Watership Down, but here they face their most difficult challenge of all . . . Watership Down is an epic journey, a stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival against the odds.
Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday, Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders' Curl up with a true children's classic by reading A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh. Winnie-the-Pooh may be a bear of very little brain, but thanks to his friends Piglet, Eeyore and, of course, Christopher Robin, he's never far from an adventure. In this story Pooh gets into a tight place, nearly catches a Woozle and heads off on an 'expotition' to the North Pole with the other animals. In this stunning edition of Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne's world-famous story is once again brought to life by E.H. Shepard's illustrations. Heart-warming and funny, Milne's masterpiece reflects the power of a child's imagination like no other story before or since. Do you own all the classic Pooh titles? Winnie-the-Pooh The House at Pooh Corner When We Were Very Young Now We Are Six Also look out for Return to the Hundred Acre Wood and The Best Bear in all the World (coming soon) Pooh ranks alongside other beloved character such as Paddington Bear, and Peter Rabbit as an essential part of our literary heritage. Whether you're 5 or 55, Pooh is the bear for all ages. A.A. Milne is quite simply one of the most famous children's authors of all time. He created Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger, Kanga and Roo based on the real nursery toys played with by his son, Christopher Robin.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is the classic story of fantasy that has delighted readers young and old for decades. Dorothy finds herself transplanted to the magical land of Oz when her house is sucked up by a tornado. To get back home she must follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City to ask the Wizard to help her get back to Kansas. Along the way she meets several interesting characters, including the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion, who join her on her travels to ask the Wizard for help of their own.
Classic
Complete the Classic square by reading any classic and recording the title on your BINGO card in the Classic square.
You can use any title that you’d like, but here are some suggestions to complete the Classic square.
1984 by George Orwell (I-Share Print or here) (I-Share Audio or here) (Libby eBook) (Libby Audio)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio) (Libby Audio)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio) (EBSCO eBook) (Libby eBook) (Libby Audio)
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio)
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio) (EBSCO eBook) (Libby Audio)
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume (I-Share Print)
A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond (I-Share Print)
Beloved by Toni Morrison (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio) (Libby eBook) (Libby Audio)
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney (I-Share Print or here) (I-Share Audio)
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (I-Share Audio) (I-Share Print) (Libby eBook)
The Call of the Wild by Jack London (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio) (EBSCO eBook and here) (Libby eBook and here) (Libby Audio)
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio) (Libby Audio)
The Color Purple by Alice Walker (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio) (Libby eBook)
The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg by Carl Sandburg (I-Share Print)
Damnable Tales: A Folk Horror Anthology ed. by Richard Wells (I-Share Print) (Libby eBook)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (I-Share Print and here) (Libby eBook)
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio) (Libby Audio)
Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel (I-Share Print)
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio)
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio) (Libby eBook) (Libby Audio)
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (I-Share Print)
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio) (Libby eBook) (Libby Audio)
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (I-Share Print) (Libby eBook)
Japanese Ghost Stories by Lafcadio Hearn (I-Share Print)
A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin (I-Share Print)
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (I-Share Audio) (I-Share Print) (Libby eBook) (EBSCO eBook and here)
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (I-Share Print and here) (I-Share Audio) (Libby eBook) (Libby Audio)
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio) (Libby Audio) (Libby eBook)
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio and here) (Libby eBook)
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiel Hammett (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio) (Libby eBook) (Libby Audio)
The Monster at the End of this Book by Jon Stone (I-Share Print)
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger (I-Share Print and here)
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio) (Libby Audio)
The Once and Future King by T.H. White (I-Share Print and here) (I-Share Audio)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (I-Share Print and here) (I-Share Audio and here) (Libby eBook and here) (Libby Audio) (EBSCO eBook and here)
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin (I-Share Print and here)
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio) (Libby eBook)
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio) (Libby eBook) (EBSCO eBook)
Watership Down by Richard Adams (I-Share Print) (I-Share Audio)
Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne (I-Share Print)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (I-Share Print and here) (I-Share Audio) (Libby Audio) (EBSCO eBook)