Books in Action classic series

Take a walk around the Secret Garden. Experience boarding school with A Little Princess. See life through a horse’s eyes with Black Beauty. Be enchanted by charming and hot-headed Anne of Green Gables. Carefully retold in clear contemporary language, and presented with delightful illustrations, these favorite classic stories will capture the heart and imagination of young readers. By retelling the story in a shorter, simpler form, children will find these books highly engaging, and the color illustrations help with both comprehension and interest level.

Discover Oscar Wilde's classic tale of double lives and corruption in this graphic retelling for kids. In the halls of London's high society, dark rumors surround a man called Dorian Gray. His ever-youthful appearance paired with a wild, decadent lifestyle arouses curiosity. Some even say his attic hides a dangerous, monstrous secret. A secret hidden in a simple portrait painted a long time ago . . . With extra background on the original novel and its author, plus discussion questions and writing prompts, it's easy to introduce young readers to this literary classic.

Here are the stories of 13 key Shakespeare plays: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, King Lear, Richard III, Othello, Macbeth, The Tempest, Henry V, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Timson presents the complex plots in a clear, entertaining and informal style, presenting the main characters in the context of the famous lines. The stories contain important passages from the plays themselves, taken from the award-winning Naxos AudioBooks recordings.

Utopia is the name given by Sir Thomas More to an imaginary island in this political work written in 1516. Book I of Utopia, a dialogue, presents a perceptive analysis of contemporary social, economic, and moral ills in England. Book II is a narrative describing a country run according to the ideals of the English humanists, where poverty, crime, injustice, and other ills do not exist. Locating his island in the New World, More bestowed it with everything to support a perfectly organized and happy people.The name of this fictitious place, Utopia, coined by More, passed into general usage and has been applied to all such ideal fictions, fantasies, and blueprints for the future, including works by Rabelais, Francis Bacon, Samuel Butler, and several by H. G. Wells, including his A Modern Utopia.

2013 Audie Award Nominee, Short Stories/CollectionsUniversally acclaimed from the time it was first published in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has been admired for decades as a stylistic masterpiece. Academy Award-winning actress Diane Keaton (Annie Hall, The Family Stone) performs these classic essays, including the title piece, which will transport the listener back to a unique time and place: the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco during the neighborhood’s heyday as a countercultural center.This is Joan Didion’s first work of nonfiction, offering an incisive look at the mood of 1960s America and providing an essential portrait of the Californian counterculture. She explores the influences of John Wayne and Howard Hughes, and offers ruminations on the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room. Taking its title from W. B. Yeats’ poem "The Second Coming," the essays in Slouching Towards Bethlehem all reflect, in one way or another, that "the center cannot hold."Slouching Towards Bethlehem is part of Audible’s A-List Collection, featuring the world’s most celebrated actors narrating distinguished works of literature that each star had a hand in selecting.

Take a walk around the Secret Garden. Experience boarding school with A Little Princess. See life through a horse’s eyes with Black Beauty. Be enchanted by charming and hot-headed Anne of Green Gables. Carefully retold in clear contemporary language, and presented with delightful illustrations, these favourite classic stories will capture the heart and imagination of young readers. By retelling the story in a shorter, simpler form, children will find these books highly engaging, and the color illustrations help with both comprehension and interest level.