Classic English Literature For Teens

Clever and pithy children's classics turned upside-down, WINK is a true delight. Evelyn Skye, New York Times bestselling author of Damsel. Fifteen young adult contemporary fantasy and science fiction tales that wink at classic works of children's literature.

Jerusha Abbott, an eighteen year old orphan, faces an uncertain future in the charity home where she has lived all her life. On reaching adulthood, the orphanage can no longer offer shelter to its inmates. Her anxiety leads her into wild speculation when she is summoned to the matron's office. But a surprise awaits her. One of the visitors, a wealthy Trustee of the orphanage, has offered to fund Jerusha's college education and fulfill her dreams of becoming a writer. The only condition he makes is that he remain anonymous and that she write to him regularly about her progress.

Scientist Dr Jekyll discovers a way of changing his personality and becoming the violent and aggressive Mr Hyde. At the start, moving from one to the other is easy. But not for long. Both a psychological investigation and a thrilling story, the double nature of the hero has made him an iconic figure in literature. The tempestuous nature of the tale makes it an ideal title for Young Adult Classics, the introductory series for the 13-17 age range.

Written in 1867, The Magic Fishbone is one of Charles Dickens' best loved fairy tales for children. It tells the story of an impoverished King who can barely manage to keep his nineteen children, and it is a long time until pay day. One day he meets a Fairy Godmother who tells him to give his eldest daughter, Princess Alicia, a piece of salmon, and after she has eaten everything but the bone, she is to dry and polish the bone carefully because it has magic powers.

When a famous actor goes missing, the search leads playwright Richard Copplestone to the seaside town of Scarhaven. Every clue seems to bring about more questions as the intrigue goes much deeper than anyone suspects. Copplestone uncovers layer after layer of dark secrets, many of them involving the attractive Audrey Greyle and her family. If Copplestone does not discover the truth soon, he risks endangering the lives of the friends he has made in Scarhaven, including Audrey.

Kathryn Barker's Waking Romeo is a spectacularly genre-bending retelling of Romeo & Juliet asking the big questions about true love, fate, and time travel.

Plain English Shakespeare adapts and abridges Shakespeare's classic plays presenting them in shorter versions in plain English. Antony and Cleopatra is a Roman tragedy with romantic and comedic aspects, first performed around 1607, based on Thomas North's translation of the story Plutarch's lives in Ancient Greek. The plays follows Antony and Cleopatra at a time of strife in Sicily and the Roman Republic more broadly.

Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung is a sci-fi adventure novel by Victor Appleton. The US Government is letting Tom Swift Jr. manage the recuperation of its probe to Jupiter. But an unknown missile abruptly intercepts the probe and splashes it in the South Atlantic. Confronted with a massive search task to locate the probe on the ocean bottom, Tom soon understands that the same mysterious group that attacked the probe is racing to find it!

Set in the early days of the Civil War, the four March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—grow from childhood to womanhood and eventually, motherhood, under the care of their mother, Marmee. Money is scarce while their father serves in the Union army, so Marmee works outside the home. The author, Louisa May Alcott, based the main character of the story—Jo March, an aspiring writer—on herself, and the three other March sisters resembled her siblings. An immediate success, Little Women was so popular that readers clamored to know more about the family. Alcott quickly penned a second book,...

>Little Women, closely based on Louisa M. Alcott’s own experience of family life, was first published in 1869 and has never lost its extraordinary power to move and delight - from the heartrending story of gentle Beth to the humorous adventures of tomboyish Jo, and Meg’s vain attempts to cut a fashionable figure in "society".

"What Katy Did" is a work written by Susan Coolidge, the pen name of Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, which was published in 1872. It follows the adventures of a twelve year old American girl, Katy Carr, and her family who live in the fictional lakeside Ohio town of Burnet in the 1860s. Katy is a tall, untidy tomboy, forever getting into scrapes but wishing to be beautiful and beloved. When a terrible accident makes her an invalid, her illness and four year recovery gradually teach her to be as good and kind as she has always wanted.

Anne of Green Gables has been translated into at least 36 languages and has sold more than 50 million copies. The novel recounts how Anne makes her way through life in the fictional Canadian town of Avonlea, in Prince Edward Island, Canada.

War looms in a small forgotten eastern European country. But war is nothing new to Samavia. The once idyllic land has been in continual struggle since the last young rightful leader was smuggled across borders to prevent his death in a violent coupe centuries before. This lost prince, or his heirs, are possibly the only thing that can restore order and peace to a once vibrant land and people. But where have they disappeared to? Two young boys are entrusted with a vital and dangerous task with the hopes of restoring the rightful ruler to the small country of Samavia.

In Aunt Cyrilla's Christmas Basket, Lucy Rose tries to talk her folksy Aunt Cyrilla out of bringing her big, bulgy, funny-looking basket to the city to deliver Christmas goodies to their relatives in the city. When their train is stranded during a snow storm, Aunt Cyrilla and her fellow passengers team up to provide a proper Christmas morning for the little ones in their care.

When the naive David Balfour sets out on his quest for a long-lost relative, a terrifying chain of events is set in motion. He is plunged into a world of infamy and violence from which there seems no escape, until, that, is, he meets the enigmatic and valiant Highland, Alan Breck.

While out for a walk, two young men find themselves on Enderly Rd., known for its poor inhabitants and shabby dwellings. They meet a crying girl on her way home and stop her. Learning that the boys who promised to help decorate the schoolhouse for the examinations to be held on Christmas Eve were backing out, the two young men decide to help out the little girl.

Maerad is a girl with a tragic and bitter past, but her powers grow stronger by the day. Now she and her mentor, Cadvan, pursued by both the Light and the Dark, are seeking the Riddle of the Treesong - the key to restoring peace in the ravaged kingdom. But is Maerad herself the greatest riddle of them all? Maerad's epic quest continues as she travels from terrifying seas to vast stretches of glacial wilderness, drawn ever closer to her enemy the Winterking.

Featuring 12 short stories where each one takes a well-known fairy tale and propels them into uncharted territories, creating surprising perspectives that challenge the very essence of the original tales.

Jack London's classic The Call of the Wild follows the adventures of the loyal dog Buck, who is stolen from his comfortable family home and forced into the harsh life of an Alaskan sled dog. Passed from master to master, Buck embarks on an extraordinary journey that ends with his becoming the legendary leader of a wolf pack.

Set mainly in the Scottish Highlands in the years following the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, Kidnapped follows the fortunes of the young David Balfour as he endeavours to claim the inheritance of which he has been cheated by his scheming Uncle Ebenezer. A tale of kidnap, shipwreck, murder, and pursuit, Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure-story is as compelling now as when it was first published in 1886.