Family Classics

How did Christopher Robin meet his beloved bear? Did Pooh and his friends see any of London before they moved to the Hundred Acre Wood? These questions and more are explored in this charming new collection of stories. Each tale features a gentle adventure set in London or the countryside, and they include iconic locations such as Harrods, London Zoo, and the Natural History Museum.

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

Can a widowed sheriff and a former drug addict believe God has the power to mend all broken hearts, even crushed ones like theirs? Now a Christian, former drug addict Emma Hughes is back in the small town of Rios Azules. She’s desperate to regain the trust of the son she once abandoned and change her life. Meeting a vacationer, Rodrigo Ybarra, she fights her attraction to him. Even with her newfound faith, the risk of a relapse is too high. On the two-year anniversary of his wife’s death at the hand of a junkie, Sheriff Rodrigo Ybarra comes to the ocean to mourn her. Romance is the last...

In a romantic comedy, a man and woman player decide to date one another because they are incapable of being faithful and knowing they’ll cheat on each other, won’t hurt one another. But because they are so much in love, they never see other people, which is “cheating” because they’re violating their agreement to continue seeing other people. Falling, deeper and deeper in love their mania grows as each suspecting the other is cheating by not cheating and tries to catch the other “cheating”, while pretending they’re being faithful, by pretending their dating around.

This is the story of Mark Twain's brief career as a Confederate soldier at the beginning of the American Civil War. Mark Twain's "private history" is told from the viewpoint of "someone who set out to do something in the war, but didn't". What starts out as a kind of class reunion/camping trip quickly becomes a series of frightful near misses with a determined and deadly foe, and ends in painful, premature death for some and a lifetime of guilty regrets for others.

Following a wild and raging storm, the Swiss family Robinson are stranded at sea. But the thundering waves have swept them off to a tropical island, where a new life awaits them. Shipwrecked passengers on a deserted island: how will they survive? Their ship is laden with supplies and the island is packed with treasures, so they soon adapt and discover new dangers and delights every day.

First published in 1926, this book is Willa Cather's sparest and most dramatic novel, a dark and prescient portrait of a marriage that subverts our oldest notions about the nature of domestic happiness.

In an experiment that goes horribly wrong, in which a woman’s memories were to be duplicated, recorded and stored in a computer, she finds herself conscious and self-aware within the machine, not knowing whether she’s the duplicate and conscious or her consciousness was ripped from her body and begins an evolution discovering firsthand how efficient the universe is.

In 1914, when Nicandra is eight, all is well in the grand Irish estate, Deer Forest. Maman is beautiful and adored. Dada, silent and small, mooches contentedly around the stables. Aunt Tossie, of the giant heart and bosom, is widowed but looks splendid in weeds. The butler, the groom, the land-steward, the maids, the men - each as a place and knows it. Then, astonishingly, the perfect surface is shattered; Maman does something too dreadful ever to be spoken of.

Jane, ich begehre von Ihnen, daß Sie mein Weib werden; nur Sie beabsichtige ich zu heiraten...

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is an 1876 novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the 1840s in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, inspired by Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived as a boy. In the novel Tom Sawyer has several adventures, often with his friend Huckleberry Finn. Originally a commercial failure, the book ended up being the best selling of any of Twain's works during his lifetime. Tom Sawyer, an orphan, lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother Sid in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri sometime in the 1840s.

Accordion Crimes opens in 1890 in Sicily as an accordion maker completes his finest instrument and dreams of owning a music store in America. He and his eleven-year-old son, carrying little more than the accordion, travel to New Orleans. Within a year, the accordion maker is murdered by an anti-Italian lynching mob, but his instrument carries Proulx's story as it falls into the hands of various immigrants who carry it from Iowa to Texas, from Maine to Louisiana, looking for a decent life.

"Bears like Paddington are very rare," says Mrs Bird, "and a good thing too, or it would cost us a small fortune in marmalade." It's a good thing for lots of reasons that bears like Paddington are rare. Whether it is his attempts at home decorating, detective work or photography, the bear from Darkest Peru causes his own special brand of chaos.

When a notorious lawyer, at the request of a famed composer, meticulously conceals his origins, his adoptive mother takes every measure to bury the truth. Pulling strings and enlisting influential allies—including a television icon—she constructs a carefully crafted facade to ensure he never uncovers his past. But as he grows older, cracks in the carefully constructed facade begin to show, leaving him haunted by an unsettling sense that something is being hidden from him.

“Murmel, murmel, murmel,” is all Robin hears coming from a hole in her sandbox. When she reaches down and out pops a baby, she finds herself in a real fix: who will take care of it? Robin’s too little! Off she goes, searching her neighborhood for someone who needs a baby. The woman with seventeen cats doesn’t want the baby. Nor does the grumpy man by the bus stop. It looks as though all hope is lost, until a friendly truck driver passes by. He offers to trade his truck for the baby—an exchange Robin can’t refuse.

Heart to Heart Stories for Dads is a timeless collection of memorable tales that show, rather than just tell, what fatherhood is all about. They are stories of unconditional love, of dependability, of strength, and of character--stories that will cause you to reflect about what it is that makes the love of a father so important. Fathers have the ability to bless every relationship their child will have in life, and it is more critical than ever that men take their responsibility of fatherhood seriously. These stories reveal the many faces of fatherhood, the qualities a father should have, ...

Mary Lennox is sent to Misselthwaite Manor in Yorkshire England after her parents die from Cholera. Also living in the manor house is her sickly cousin Colin, who is every bit as spoiled as she. Mary and Colin are like two peas in a pod, closed up in a gloomy old manor on the Yorkshire moors, until a secret garden captures their imaginations. As spring brings new life to the Earth, Mary and Colin's sour natures begin to change.

When 16-year-old Portia is orphaned, she is plunged into the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home. There she encounters the attractive cad Eddie. To him, Portia is at once child and woman, and he fears her gushing love. To her, Eddie is the only reason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal - and sets in motion one of the most moving and desperate flights of the heart in modern literature.

One day, Naomi and her family moved to a city called Moab. Her two sons married two women from Moab. Eventually, Naomi's husband and both of her sons died. Without her family beside her, she became homesick for her hometown of Bethlehem.

What happened to Naomi's two daughter-in-laws? Did Naomi move back to Bethlehem? Did God provide for her during her journey? Who came with her? Did Naomi give God thanks for her home and family? Listen to find out for yourself!

Long-listed in the Fish International Short Story Competition 2013/2014. Peter is a humble shoemaker who works very hard to provide for his family. They live in an old house in a remote village, where the winters are harsh and food is in short supply. One night, Peter was working late, as usual, when a strange visitor suddenly appeared on the walls of his workshop. It was a visitor unlike any other...