Family Classics

In this captivating collection of stories by the author of Ballet Shoes, there are auditions on stage and antics on ice, trips to the pantomime, holiday adventures and laughter shared with family and friends. Charming, heartwarming and funny, this collection will bring joy to listeners of all ages. Originally written in the 1940s-'60s for annuals, magazines and the radio, these stories have never been collected before.

Lawrence explores love, sex, passion, and marriage through the eyes of two sisters. Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen are the two intelligent, incisive, and observant sisters whose temperamental differences spark an ongoing debate regarding their society and their inner lives. The two very different sisters pursue thrilling, torrid affairs, but their search for more mature emotional relationships reveals some startling information about themselves as well as their lovers, Rupert Birkin and Gerald Crich.

'You don’t mean you're going to divorce him?' Miss Spanner said with horror. A sophisticated, emotive novel, Chatterton Square concerns the complex web of relationships between two neighbouring families, the Blacketts and the Frasers. Framed by the advance of the Second World War, the subtle mechanics of marriage and love are laid bare through the observation of three of the marital options open to the mid-century woman: unmarried, separated, miserably married.

Wendy is determined to stand her ground and not let Darsha, the most popular girl in school, intimidate her as the fireworks between them continue to fly! She has discovered to her amazement that Russell Rogers has stopped throwing snowballs at her and is starting to "woo her with his ways!" Brent Reynolds, her first love, has moved away to Idaho. Will she ever hear from him? Wendy's hair has continued to grow, and she discovers that it has brought her a lot of positive attention! Why didn't she grow it years ago? Being a teenager and going to junior high school is a never-ending adventure....

A father and three of his seven children work brutal hours in a mine, facing hazards such as landslides, fire, and poisoned air, to scrape together enough money for food. When their lodger, Étienne, shares ideas about a workers' revolt, the family gradually embraces his plans. Soon the settlement is aflame with resolve to strike for better wages and working conditions. Savage and horrifying events ensue as miners clash with management and with each other.

The Bastable children decide to help their father by seeking their fortune in amazing and amusing ways.

January 1948 began a wonderful year for the Lechows. With Father newly returned to Western Germany from a Russian prison camp, they were together again and could enjoy a measure of security and happiness in The Ark, their railroad car home on Rowan Farm. It was a year that held for sixteen-year-old Margret in particular, both joy and sorrow. She found real satisfaction in entering Mrs. Almut's Great Danes in two important shows and in raising several young animals which were her very own.

Considered by Time magazine to be one of the best fantasy books of all time, Edith Nesbit's Five Children and It follows a tribe of children on their magical adventures during a summer in the English countryside. When a strange, furry creature appears in front of the children and offers a wish a day, the children take advantage of the creature's abilities and discover that their wishes have many unforeseen - and often quite funny - consequences.

Anno Domini, in the year of our Lord, for God so loved the world, that he sent his only begotten daughter, Candice…She hasn’t spoken to him since. On her 28th birthday, Jesus and Satan sit down with their militant baby sister, Candice, still not pleased she was drafted into the family business and determined to carve out her own niche in the firmament.

Scout (Jean Louise Finch) has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father, Atticus. She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand both her father's attitude toward society and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood.

Having doubted the existence of the others, at the same time, to their shock and terror, a Ghost, a Time Traveler, and an Extraterrestrial appear to a man, who’s not surprised at all.

Jeden Abend lauscht der schwerkranke Krümel den Geschichten seines älteren Bruders Jonathan - über Nangijala, dem Land der Sagen und Märchen, in das die Menschen nach ihrem Tod gehen. Als Jonathan durch ein Unglück ums Leben kommt und Krümel kurz darauf an seiner Krankheit stirbt, treffen sie sich an jenem geheimnisvollen Ort. Und so beginnt das Abenteuer der Brüder Löwenherz.

This audio will focus on Brad and Ashley Hanes, young newlyweds who are facing their first season of winter. Opposite work schedules, differing views on finances and when to start a family, and Brads selfish and immature habits are forcing the young couple apart, causing them to question why they ever got married in the first place. It will take a whole lot of help - mostly from their nosy but well-meaning neighbors - for Ashley and Brad to pull their marriage out of the winter blues and into a hopeful spring.

The descendants of Richard and Anne Lee have occupied a preeminent place in American history. They were among the first families of Virginia. Two were signers of the Declaration of Independence; several others distinguished themselves during the Revolutionary War; and one, Robert E. Lee, remains widely known.

The story of four generations of a wealthy bourgeois family in northern Germany facing the advent of modernity; in an uncertain new world, the family’s bonds and traditions begin to disintegrate. As Mann charts the Buddenbrooks’ decline from prosperity to bankruptcy, from moral and psychic soundness to sickly piety, artistic decadence, and madness, he ushers the listener into a world of stunning vitality, pieced together from births and funerals, weddings and divorces, recipes, gossip, and earthy humor.

En Sentido y sensibilidad, Jane Austen explora con sutileza e ironía las opciones de la mujer en una sociedad rígida, donde el éxito o el fracaso dependen de la elección del marido. La historia se centra en dos hermanas, Elinor y Marianne, cuyas personalidades antagónicas ejemplifican dos posibles respuestas femeninas ante la hipocresía dominante: el «sentido común» y la «sensibilidad». Sin embargo, tanto un camino como el otro entrañan sus peligros.

"Towers - like flame. A candle in darkness. A black wind." Roland Watson wasn't expecting to see things like that when he kicked a football into a condemned church. But once inside, he is taken from the slums of Manchester to the ruins of a magical kingdom. And only he can bring back the light to Elidor.

Every year the Stevens family pack their things and enjoy two weeks’ holiday in Bognor Regis. Their journey starts at home in Dulwich, where everyone takes pride in fine-tuning holiday preparations, from marshalling helpful neighbours to carefully boarding the emptiest train carriage. The family always stay in “Seaview”, an increasingly shabby boarding house, complete with ageing landlady Mrs Huggett.

The New Treasure Seekers is the third of Edith Nesbit’s delightful books about the six Bastable siblings in search of treasure to restore their family's failed fortune. The best efforts of the well-meaning children - Oswald (a master of the malapropism), Dora, Dickey, Alice, Noël, and Horace Octavius - go spectacularly astray.

One of the world's best-loved stories of shipwreck and survival, The Swiss Family Robinson portrays a family's struggle to create a new life for themselves on a strange and fantastic tropical island. Blown off course by a raging storm, the family - a Swiss pastor, his wife, their four young sons, plus two dogs and a shipload of livestock - must rely on one another in order to adapt to their needs the natural wonders of their exotic new home.