Beatrix Potter's charming stories have enchanted children for over a hundred years. This collection includes eighteen favorite tales about Peter Rabbit, Tom Kitten, Squirrel Nutkin, Mrs. Tittlemouse, and the others. Let your children share in the tradition of Beatrix Potter and her animal family, a literary treasure for generations to cherish.

Originally published as a serial story, Wives and Daughters is told with an episodic narrative, following a young woman named Molly Gibson as she comes of age. Molly is the only child of a widowed doctor. Raised in an English provincial town, Molly's childhood is filled with trips to aristocratic mansions and bonding experiences with her father. As she grows older however, men become more interested in her because of her attractive appearance. When...

The celebrated Victorian author of Middlemarch explores the turbulent world of Florence during the Italian Renaissance in this sweeping historical novel. Florence, 1492. Lorenzo de Medici has just died, leaving governance of the Florentine Republic to his son Piero, an unskilled ruler. Meanwhile, Tito Melema, a shipwrecked stranger, finds love with a young woman named Romola, the devoted daughter of a blind scholar. Though her brother has a vision...

Captains Courageous is a novel by Rudyard Kipling, that follows the adventures of fifteen-year-old Harvey Cheyne Jr., the spoiled son of a railroad tycoon, after he is saved from drowning by a Portuguese fisherman in the north Atlantic. The book's title comes from the ballad "Mary Ambree", which starts, "When captains courageous, whom death could not daunt". Kipling had previously used the same title for an article on businessmen as the new adventurers,...

Published early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, of England, only five years after the death of the Roman Catholic Queen Mary, the work is an affirmation of the Protestant Reformation in England during the ongoing period of religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants. Since the English monarchs also asserted control over the Church in England, a change in rulers could change the legal status of religious practices. As a consequence, adherents...

Michael Howard (1922–2019) was a leading British military historian who held professorships at the University of Oxford and Yale University. His many books included The Franco-Prussian War and War in European History. Peter Paret (1924–2020) was professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His many books include Clausewitz in His Time, The Cognitive Challenge of War (Princeton), and Clausewitz and the State (Princeton)....

In the charming village of Tilling, Miss Elizabeth Mapp reigns supreme with her sharp wit and keen eye for gossip, orchestrating social intrigues and rivalries with a flair that keeps her neighbors on their toes. As she navigates the delicate balance of maintaining her status and outsmarting her adversaries, Miss Mapp's world becomes a delightful tapestry of humorous escapades and cunning schemes. E. F. Benson masterfully crafts a vivid portrait...

Set apart from the other books in Ian Fleming's “James Bond” series, “The Spy Who Loved Me” is told from the perspective of a femme fatale in the making—a victim of circumstance with a wounded heart. Vivienne Michel, a precocious French Canadian raised in the United Kingdom, seems a foreigner in every land. With only a supercharged Vespa and a handful of American dollars, she travels down winding roads into the pine forests of the Adirondacks....

This semi-autobiographical book is about the life of a young English woman who marries an ageing German aristocrat and in the marriage she focuses on her garden and children, at the same time running a country house. She also writes down her observations of the stuffy German aristocratic set using her razor sharp wit. Von Arnim was a successful author in her time and deserves to be re-discovered, this novel is a gem. In the first year of publication...

Step into the charming world of "Cranford" by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. This delightful novel invites you to a quaint English village, where the lives of its eccentric and endearing inhabitants are interwoven in a tapestry of humor, heartwarming moments, and social observations. Set in the early 19th century, the narrative unfolds through the eyes of Mary Smith, an outsider welcomed into the close-knit community. As she navigates the idiosyncrasies...