Books in Best Novel Classics series

In this sequel to 'Alice in Wonderland', Alice walks through a mirror straight into the topsy-turvy, back-to-front Looking-glass Kingdom. There she meets a collection of even 'curiouser' characters than before; the walrus and the carpenter, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Humpty Dumpty, the White Knight and the Red Queen, to name but a few. But nothing is quite what it seems.

Classics for Your Collection: goo.gl/U80LCr --------- Twain starts by having Soldier Boy (the horse) speaking. I am Buffalo Bill's horse. From that you would expect a story of rough and ready Army Scout type of adventures told from the horse's perspective. This is not what happens, though. A very moving tale of a girl and a horse. One of my favorite Mark Twain stories. A Horse's Tale is not always narrated from the horse's point of view and other parts of the book take the form of letters (from human characters). From Mark Twain, this book is of course both funny and historical.

Classics for Your Collection: goo.gl/U80LCr --------- Jane Austen's Juvenilia! This beautiful collection of the early works of Jane Austen uniquely shows the emerging talent of a brilliant and observant young woman. Completed before Austen was fifteen, the works are astonishing in their maturity. Blending the exuberance of youth with the sharp wit and devastating social criticism of her later novels, Love and Freindship is a collection not to be missed. This a quick, undemanding and very entertaining read. For readers who appreciate Jane Austen's novels, it is fascinating to see her gift for wit and satire, her lively mind and her sense of the ridiculous so evident in her teenage writings. The book starts with a letter from Isabel to her dear friend Laura, begging her to disclose the unhappy story of her life to her daughter Marianne as a cautionary tale. Laura complies in a series of letters to Marianne, and a more convoluted life history would be hard to imagine. Jane Austen's juvenilia. The first of them written at age 14. The sharp eye for what's really happening, the ear for dialog, the unfailing BS meter, the wit that goes to the bone, the rapier-edged turns of phrase, the snobs, the buccaneers, the fortune-hunting jilters, even the names that will reappear attached to some of the most memorable characters in Eng lit--Dashwood, Annesley, Crawford, Willoughby. You can glimpse the incipient Lady Catherine, Lydia Bennett, Mrs. John Dashwood, lots of fun. A short book. All epistolary--some just single letters--as Faye Weldon says in the intro, they're short stories all by themselves. Some Quotes From the Book: “The Very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone.” “Our time was most delightfully spent, in mutual Protestations of Freindship, and in vows of unalterable Love, in which we were secure from being interrupted, by intruding and disagreeable Visistors, as Augustus and Sophia had on their first Entrance in the Neighbourhood, taken due care to inform the surrounding Families, that as their happiness centered wholly in themselves, they wished for no other society.” Scroll Up and Grab Your Copy! Jane Austen's Books: Lady Susan by Jane Austen https://www.createspace.com/6398116 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen https://www.createspace.com/6425513 Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen https://www.createspace.com/6428190 Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen https://www.createspace.com/6428537 Persuasion by Jane Austen https://www.createspace.com/6427638

Classics for Your Collection:goo.gl/U80LCr---------The story is about two girls, Bab and Betty Moss, Miss Celia, a circus runaway, Ben Brown, and his dog Sancho.When Bab and Betty decide to have a tea party with their dolls a mysterious dog comes and steals their prized cake. The girls find a circus run-away, Ben Brown, hiding in their play barn. Ben is a horse master, so when the Mosses take Ben in they find him work at a neighbour's house driving cows.Eventually Ben finds out his beloved father is dead. Miss Celia, a neighbour, comforts him and finally offers to let Ben stay with her and her fourteen-year-old brother Thornton.Many adventures and summer-happenings go on in Celia's house, as Ben slowly finds his place among his friends. Sancho gets lost, Ben is accused of stealing, Miss Celia gets hurt and Ben takes a wild ride on her horse, Lita. They have an archery competition, where Ben emerges as the winner.The body of this book sweeps you back a hundred years to a different time and place.This book by Louisa May Alcott will delight readers young and old and remind them that kindness wins the day.Scroll Up and Grab Your Copy!

Classics for Your Collection:goo.gl/U80LCr---------In this short story, Holmes is visited by a perturbed proper English gentleman, John Scott Eccles, who wishes to discuss something “grotesque”. No sooner has he arrived at 221B Baker Street than Inspector Gregson also shows up, along with Inspector Baynes of the Surrey Constabulary. They wish a statement from Eccles about the murder near Esher last night. A note in the dead man’s pocket indicates that Eccles said that he would be at the victim’s house that night.Eccles is shocked to hear of Aloysius Garcia’s beating death. Yes, he spent the night at Wisteria Lodge, Garcia’s rented house, but when he woke up in the morning, he found that Garcia and his servants had all disappeared. He was alone in an empty house. He last remembers seeing Garcia at about one o’clock in the morning when he came to Eccles’s room to ask if he had rung.Eccles met Garcia, a Spaniard, through an acquaintance, and seemed to form an unlikely friendship right away. Garcia invited Eccles to stay at his house for a few days, but when Eccles got there, he could tell that something was amiss. Garcia seemed distracted by something, and the whole mood of the visit seemed quite sombre. Indeed, Garcia’s mood became even darker once his servant handed him a note that evening.Eccles left Wisteria Lodge and inquired about the place at the estate agent’s, and was surprised to find that the rent on the house had been paid in full. Odder still, no-one at the Spanish Embassy in London had heard of Garcia.Inspector Baynes produces the note that Eccles saw Garcia receive. It reads “Our own colours, green and white. Green open, white shut. Main stair, first corridor, seventh right, green baize. Godspeed. D.”, in a woman’s handwriting. Could it have been a tryst? Could a jealous husband be behind Garcia’s death?It emerges that Baynes has deduced that Garcia’s body had been lying out in the open since one o’clock, but Eccles says that this is impossible, as Garcia came to his room about then. Holmes theorizes that Garcia may have tampered with the clocks to get Eccles to bed earlier than he thought it was, and that the whole business of coming to his room and making a point of mentioning that it was one o’clock — when it was probably much earlier — was likely aimed at setting up an alibi, but for what?Another of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's marvelous mystery stories.At the outset , the plot seems to be quite complex but as it unravels through Holmes's intelligent scheme of deduction by gaining evidence, things fall into place, making it an ecellent plot.NOTE: Out of the entire collection of Holmes stories by Doyle, this is the only story in which a police inspector (specifically, Inspector Baynes) is as competent as Holmes. Holmes has nothing but praise for Inspector Baynes, believing that he will rise high in his profession, for he has instinct and intuition. Scroll Up and Get Your Copy!

Classics for Your Collection:goo.gl/U80LCr---------The story begins with the mysterious death of Sir Richard Trevlyn. All the reader knows is that Richard's wife, Alice, who is pregnant with their first child, listens through a keyhole in the library door to a conversation Richard has with a visitor. What she hears horrifies her, she faints, and a servant, Hester, finds her and helps her to bed. Alice insists Richard not be disturbed, but Hester is worried and goes to the library anyway to tell him his wife is ill. She finds him slumped over his desk, dead.Twelve years later the child, Lillian, meets a stranger on the grounds, a sixteen year old boy named Paul who applies for work on the estate. He does his job well, advancing in position and earning the affection of family and servants alike. Some of the servants suspect he may be more than a mere gardener or groom, but they like him and when he leaves without a word to anyone they are confused and disappointed.The mysteries of why Richard died, who Paul is and how those things are related are drawn out all the way to the last chapters when all is revealed. The authour does a fine job of building interest and holding the reader's attentionThis tale is a good change from the usual 'Little Women' series that Alcott is associated with…Scroll Up and Grab Your Copy!

Classics for Your Collection: goo.gl/U80LCr --------- The story begins in May 1863, in the Lidenbrock house in Hamburg, Germany, with Professor Lidenbrock rushing home to peruse his latest purchase, an original runic manuscript of an Icelandic saga written by Snorri Sturluson (Snorre Tarleson in some versions of the story), "Heimskringla"; the chronicle of the Norwegian kings who ruled over Iceland. While looking through the book, Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel find a coded note written in runic script along with the name of a 16th-century Icelandic alchemist, Arne Saknussemm. (This was a first indication of Verne's love for cryptography. Coded, cryptic or incomplete messages as a plot device would continue to appear in many of his works and in each case Verne would go a long way to explain not only the code used but also the mechanisms used to retrieve the original text.) Lidenbrock and Axel transliterate the runic characters into Latin letters, revealing a message written in a seemingly bizarre code. Lidenbrock attempts a decipherment, deducing the message to be a kind of transposition cipher; but his results are as meaningless as the original. Professor Lidenbrock decides to lock everyone in the house and force himself and the others (Axel, and the maid, Martha) to go without food until he cracks the code. Axel discovers the answer when fanning himself with the deciphered text: Lidenbrock's decipherment was correct, and only needs to be read backwards to reveal sentences written in rough Latin. Axel decides to keep the secret hidden from Professor Lidenbrock, afraid of what the Professor might do with the knowledge, but after two days without food he cannot stand the hunger and reveals the secret to his uncle. Lidenbrock translates the note, which is revealed to be a medieval note written by the (fictional) Icelandic alchemist Arne Saknussemm, who claims to have discovered a passage to the center of the Earth via Snæfell in Iceland. THE DECIPHERED MESSAGE READS: . “Descend, bold traveller, into the crater of the jökull of Snæfell, which the shadow of Scartaris touches (lit: tastes) before the Kalends of July, and you will attain the center of the earth. I did it.” Arne Saknussemm Professor Lidenbrock is a man of astonishing impatience, and departs for Iceland immediately, taking his reluctant nephew with him. The rest is a great adventure. Scroll Up and Get Your Copy! Oz Books: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz https://www.createspace.com/6426287 TIK-TOK of OZ https://www.createspace.com/6353841 Ozma of Oz https://www.createspace.com/6356346 Glinda of OZ https://www.createspace.com/6461890 The Scarecrow of OZ https://www.createspace.com/6461981 The Marvelous Land of Oz https://www.createspace.com/6462832 Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz https://www.createspace.com/6464450 The Road to Oz by https://www.createspace.com/6464521 The Emerald City of Oz https://www.createspace.com/6464602 The Patchwork Girl of Oz https://www.createspace.com/6464682 The Lost Princess of Oz https://www.createspace.com/6465342 The Tin Woodman of Oz https://www.createspace.com/6466582 Rinkitink in Oz https://www.createspace.com/6464764 The Magic of Oz https://www.createspace.com/6466620 Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm https://www.createspace.com/6440051 Sky Island by L. Frank Baum https://www.createspace.com/6446563 The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett https://www.createspace.com/6455917

Classics for Your Collection:goo.gl/U80LCr---------The People of the Abyss (1903) is a book by Jack London about life in the East End of London in 1902. He wrote this first-hand account after living in the East End (including the White chapel District) for several months, sometimes staying in workhouses or sleeping on the streets. The conditions he experienced and wrote about were the same as those endured by an estimated 500,000 of the contemporary London poor.A very intense book. The way the author describes the horrid conditions of East London (around 1900) will make you really grateful for your present situation in life (no matter what it might be). It is amazing and very difficult to believe that so many (as in thousands upon thousands) of people lived in such desperate and despicable conditions yet this was the case. Jack London voluntarily put himself in this situation to learn what life was like for the wretched. Luckily for him, he had a refuge when things got too tough (and they often did) but none of the others he came into contact with, had such an escape.Facts and Trivia:There had been several previous accounts of slum conditions in England, most notably The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 by Friedrich Engels. However, most of these were based on secondhand sources. Jack London's account was based on the firsthand experience of the writer, and proved to be more popular.George Orwell was inspired by The People of the Abyss, which he read in his teens, and in the 1930s he began disguising himself as a derelict and made tramping expeditions into the poor section of London himself, in emulation of Jack London. The influence of The People of the Abyss can be seen in Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier.Scroll Up and Grab Your Copy!

Classics for Your Collection:goo.gl/U80LCr---------Polly Milton, a 14-year-old country girl, visits her friend Fanny Shaw and her wealthy family in the city for the first time. Poor Polly is overwhelmed by the splendor at the Shaws' and their urbanized, fashionable lifestyles, expensive clothes and other habits she has never been exposed to, and, for the most part, dislikes. Fanny's friends ignore her because of her different behavior and simple clothing, Fanny's brother Tom teases her, and Fan herself can't help considering her unusual sometimes. However, Polly's warmth, support and kindness eventually win the hearts of all the family members, and her old-fashioned ways teach them a lesson.Over the next six years, Polly visits the Shaws every year and comes to be considered a member of the family. Later, Polly comes back to the city to become a music teacher and struggles with professional issues and internal emotions. Later in the book, Polly finds out that the prosperous Shaws are on the brink of bankruptcy, and she guides them to the realization that a wholesome family life is the only thing they will ever need, not money or decoration.With the comfort of the ever helpful Polly, the family gets to change for the better and to find a happier life for all of them. After being rejected by his fiancée, Trix, Tom procures a job out West, with Polly's brother Ned, and heads off to help his family and compensate for all the money he has wasted in frivolous expenditures. At that point of the book, we see that Polly and Tom seem to have developed strong feelings for one another.At the end of the book, Tom returns from the West and finally gets engaged to his true love, Polly.Scroll Up and Get Your Copy!