Usborne Phonics Readers have been created in consultation with a language expert, taking into account the latest research on the most effective ways of teaching reading. Children who have just learned to read can enjoy the lively stories with very little guidance from an adult, gaining the experience and enthusiasm they need to become fully confident readers.
Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeenie. But when Zeenie's vivacious cousin enters their household as a "hired girl", Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. In one of American fiction's finest and most intense narratives…
n The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton depicts the glittering salons of Gilded Age New York with precision and wit, even as she movingly portrays the obstacles that impeded women's choices at the turn of the century. The beautiful, much-desired Lily Bart has been raised to be one of the perfect wives of the wealthy upper class, but her spark of character and independent drive prevents her from …
A boy is a little jealous of his new baby brother until mommy gives him a hug and the new baby gives him a smile'
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Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." On the surface a witty, bantering tale, this eighteenth-century classic is actually a savage, satiric thrust at the philosophical optimism that proclaims that all disaster and human suffering is part of a benevolen…
Newland Archer and May Welland have just announced their engagement to New York society, and the match seems perfect -- until Archer meets Countess Olenska, a sharp, beautiful woman in the midst of a divorce . . . it's for good reason this book won Edith Wharton Pulitzer Prize. "Is it -- in this world -- vulgar to ask for more? To entreat a little wildness, a dark place or two in the soul?" --…
from the back cover: 'Every day someone steals money from people near the shops. We must stop this,' says Dan, a police officer. The police use TV cameras but it is not easy because there are so many suspects - who is the robber?
from the back cover: It is the year 650 in England. There is war everywhere because the old king is dead and he has no son. Only when the new king comes can the fighting stop and the strange, magical story of King Arthur begin. But first, Merlin the ancient magician has to find a way of finding the next king . . .