Books in Stardust Classics series

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark WS To be, or not to be,—that is the question. Frailty, thy name is woman! Neither a borrower nor a lender be. This above all,—to thine own self be true. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Murder most foul. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Get thee to a nunnery. The lady protests too much, methinks. Alas, poor Yorick!—I knew him, Horatio. How Shakespeare has enriched the English language in this work alone! The tragedies of William Shakespeare—KING LEAR—HAMLET—MACBETH—JULIUS CAESAR—and others are considered by many as the high points in the literature of the language—if not of the world. HAMLET, Shakespeare's brilliant tale of murder and madness, consistently tops lists of the greatest stage plays of all time, and the lead role may be the most coveted by the greatest actors of theater history.

Alissa is impatient with her great-aunts' lessons in fine manners. She'd much rather study with her new teacher, Balin-a wise and powerful wizard. Balin's lessons take on new importance when his crystal ball reveals a threat to the kingdom. Can Alissa solve a series of riddles in time to prevent disaster? Full color illustrations throughout. Ages 7 and up.

Alissa is impatient with her great-aunts' lessons in fine manners. She'd much rather study with her new teacher, Balin-a wise and powerful wizard. Balin's lessons take on new importance when his crystal ball reveals a threat to the kingdom. Can Alissa solve a series of riddles in time to prevent disaster? Full color illustrations throughout. Ages 7 and up.

HEART OF DARKNESS In 1889, Joseph Conrad journeyed to Colonial Africa to assume command of a Congo River steamboat. There he discovered the dark nature of European exploitation of the peoples and natural resources of a continent, as well as the darkness and dangers of nature itself. HEART OF DARKNESS is a dramatization of Conrad’s experiences and discoveries. Narrated in the vocabulary of Conrad’s storyteller Marlow, the author expresses the horrors of a system he has grown to despise. Just as forcefully, he reveals the darkness that participation in such a system can visit upon the human soul. THE SECRET SHARER Joseph Conrad, once a captain in the same seas where this story is set, chooses his fictional captain to narrate his story. At anchor near a group of small islands, the new captain of the Sephora is surprised by a swimmer close by. He takes him aboard and discovers that he, Leggat by name, is fleeing punishment on another ship for a "murder." The captain hears his story and takes him aboard. But is his story true. Should he be concealed from the crew, who surely know the unproven captain's legal responsibilities? Can the young captain's future, not to mention the safety of the crew, be put at risk on the strength of a desperate man's tale?

No novel is more often connected to the German STURM UND DRANG (Storm and Stress) literary movement than Goethe’s THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER. Written during the author’s early twenties, it is a passionate, tragic story of hopeless love—and is somewhat autobiographical. Its publication immediately assured Goethe’s literary prominence. The novel is also credited as a major influence on the development of the later Romantic movement in the literary arts. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, of course, became one of the most celebrated names in Western literature. Author of four novels, he was also a prolific poet and a dramatist. But the creator of FAUST, PROMETHEUS, and many other great works did not limit his efforts to literature. His studies in botany, human anatomy, and physics established Goethe as one of the leading scientists of his time.

PYGMALION is easily George Bernard Shaw’s most enduring—and most endearing—work. Though inspired by the Ancient Greek legend, Pygmalion (Henry Higgins) is not a sculptor but a professor of British dialect; his Galatea (Liza Doolittle), not a statue but a common English flower girl. Once inspiration has played its role, Shaw leaves antiquity behind and brings his characters into a new age. Higgins does not want to marry his creation, he wants to flaunt his skills by turning Liza into sophisticated lady—though a fraudulent one. Shaw’s theme is centered on the evolving moralities, styles, and gender roles of his own time, but his theme is just as relevant today as it was then. Shaw’s play gained a new generation of admirers when it hit Broadway in 1956 as the Lerner and Loewe musical MY FAIR LADY. In 1964, the film version expanded the new audience worldwide. But music and dancing aside, it is Shaw’s brilliant story that is the heart of its appeal.

“By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.” Second Witch, Act IV, Scene I Macbeth is an unprincipled but imaginative man, with a strong tincture of reverence and awe. Hitherto he has been restrained in the straight path of an upright life by his respect for conventions. When once that barrier is broken down, he has no purely moral check in his own nature to replace it, and rushes like a flood, with ever growing impetus, from, crime to crime. His wife, on the other hand, has a conscience; and conscience, unlike awe for conventions, can be temporarily suppressed, but not destroyed. It reawakes when the first great crime is over, drives the unhappy queen from her sleepless couch night after night, and hounds her at last to death. It is the tragedy of eager ambition, which allows a man no respite after the first fatal mistake, but hurries him on irresistibly through crime after crime to the final disaster. —from AN INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE, by H. N. MacCracken and F. E. Pierce and W. H. Durham

The author is a sailor; his protagonist, Humphrey van Weyden, is not. He must become one, however, if he is to survive. Adrift in San Francisco Bay after a collision, he is rescued by the outbound schooner GHOST. Wolf Larson, its seal-hunter captain, refuses to reverse course and bullies the intellectual van Wyden into becoming a member of his crew. The captain, he discovers, also has intellectual leanings. Van Weyden finds himself as something of a confident of his volatile master. He also finds himself promoted to a position beyond his skills. Larson’s acts of cruelty toward his charges, eventually results in a mutiny, with van Weyden caught in the middle. When Maud Brewster is taken aboard after a storm, tensions between the two men build toward unavoidable and decisive confrontation.