from the back cover: Life is always hard for the poor, in any place and at any time. Ethan Frome is a farmer in Massachusetts. He works long hours every day, but his farm makes very little money. His wife, Zeena, is a thin, grey woman, always complaining, and only interested in her own ill health. Then Mattie Silver, a young cousin, comes to live with the Fromes, to help Zeena and do the ho…
Imagine an animal with teeth as big as bananas - and a brain as big as an orange. Or a flying animal with wings as wide as a small plane. Think about a tail that could knock a man's head off, or a mouth with hundreds of teeth. Is it any surprise that people are interested in dinosaurus? Nobody has ever seen a living dinosaur, but millions of us go to museums every year to stare at the bones of…
from the back cover: 'When we are happy, we are always good,' says Lord Henry, 'but when we are good, we are not always happy.' Lord Henry's lazy, clever words lead the young Dorian Gray into a world where it is better to be beautiful than to be good; a world where anything can be forgiven - even murder - if it can make people laugh at a dinner party.
from the back cover: The job was too good. There had to be a problem - and there was. John Duncan was an honest man, but he needed money. He had children to look after. He was ready to do anything, and his bosses knew it. They gave him the job because he couldn't say no; he couldn't afford to be honest. And the job was like a poison inside him. It changed him and blinded him, so that h…
from the back cover: On a September day in 1821, in the church of a Yorkshire village, a man and six children stood around a grave. They were burying a woman: the man's wife, the children's mother. The children were all very young, and within a few years the two oldest were dead, too. Close to the wild beauty of the Yorkshire moors, the father brought up his young family. Who had heard of t…
from the back cover: A warm summer night. The moon shines down on the quiet houses and gardens. Everyone is asleep. Everyone except the man in pyjamas and slippers, standing on the wet grass at the end of his garden, watching and waiting . . . In these three short stories, H. E. Bates presents ordinary people like you and me. But as we get to know them better, we see that their feelings are…