Modern Classics

The Pilgrim’s Progress: A Journey Retold for Teens – With Commentary, Reflective Questions, Scripture Connections & Devotional Prayer! What if one of the greatest Christian classics ever written could speak directly to today’s teens? The Pilgrim’s Progress: A Journey Retold for Teens is a bold and fresh reimagining of John Bunyan’s legendary allegory—crafted especially for the next generation. With modernized language, real-life teen commentary, and built-in devotional tools, this edition turns Bunyan’s epic story of Christian’s spiritual journey into an unforgettable ...

In 1960, John Steinbeck set out in his pick-up truck with his dog, Charley, to rediscover and chronicle his native USA, from Maine to California. He felt that he might have lost touch with its sights, sounds and the essence of the American people. Moving through the woods and deserts, dirt tracks and highways to large cities and glorious wildernesses, Steinbeck observed - with remarkable honesty, insight and a humorous eye - the gamut of America and the people who inhabited it.

Territory of Light is the radiant story of a young woman living alone in Tokyo with her two-year-old daughter. Its 12 chapters follow the first year of the narrator's separation from her husband. The novel is full of light, sometimes comforting and sometimes dangerous: sunlight streaming through windows, dappled light in the park, distant fireworks, dazzling floodwater, desaturated streetlamps and mysterious explosions. The delicate prose is beautifully patterned: the cumulative effect is disarmingly powerful and bright after-images remain in your mind for a long time afterwards.

Classic Spirituality for the Modern Man takes a radically new approach to the question of spirituality. Its purpose is to bring the spiritual classics alive so that they can once again serve their original and true purpose: to guide and inspire us as we make our way through life.

This is a story from the Canterbury Tales II: Modern Verse Translation collection.

Rediscover the greatest love poetry ever written. Shakespeare’s sonnets are some of the nation’s favourite lines of verse, but the Elizabethan language can make it difficult to really understand them. Many guides offer to clarify the meaning, but lose the magic of the words by explaining them away. James Anthony has done something boldly different.

When a troubled young runaway arrives on Tom Ripley's French estate, he is drawn into a world he thought he'd left behind: the seedy underworld of Berlin, involving kidnapping plots, lies and deception. Ripley becomes the boy's protector as friendship develops between the young man with a guilty conscience and the older one with no conscience at all.

Unlock the mystery of Original Sin—a cornerstone of Christian theology that reveals humanity’s brokenness and need for redemption. From Adam and Eve’s pivotal sin in the Garden of Eden, this book delves into inherited sin and its far-reaching effects on our spiritual lives and moral understanding.

This audiobook contains six of the most popular Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer translated into Modern English Slang (without swear words, of course). This is a fun way to get the old English storyline and understand the original text.

Confucius was a legendary philosopher and theorist of government. Contemporaneous with Sun Tzu, he was active in the sixth and fifth centries, BCE. Though he was largely ineffective during his own career, his approach to leadership as a highly conservative morality and study of the classics has influenced bureaucratic rule in China to this day. "The Analects", literally "Edited Conversations", is a collection of aphorisms and brief conversations attributed to Confucius, but most likely not written during his lifetime. The standard translations of this work are usually stuffed with ...

Niccolo Machiavelli was an Italian diplomat and philosopher during the Renaissance, and a senior official in the Florentine Republic. After being imprisioned, and then exiled from politics, he wrote "The Prince" in 1513. While a keen commentator on political and military matters, Machiavelli also wrote poetry and comedies which were popular in his lifetime, unlike is political works. Still, his first love was ever and always politics.

Ease the hearts and minds of children who have recently moved with this delightful modern twist on the classic Christmas story, which teaches kids that true joy doesn't come from getting gifts.

Following the framework of a tale within a tale, Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, which features the subtitle The Modern Prometheus follows the scientific - and at times horrific - exploits of Victor Frankenstein. Victor studied alchemy in college, and after a mere two years he figures out that he can put human body pieces back together and restore the entire corpse to life.

Crafting a killer cozy can be perilous. Fans of the genre expect authors to forego explicit gore and violence while at the same time creating a mind-boggling murder mystery with pulse-pounding tension and a twisty plot. But how is a writer supposed to satisfy such disparate demands? How to Craft a Killer Cozy Mystery tackles this exact problem by providing an actionable roadmap for starting (and completing!) a manuscript that will leave readers dying for more. Packed with charts and questionnaires designed to streamline the writing process, this comprehensive step-by-step guide will help ...

Pilgrim’s Progress: A Contemporary Journey of Faith Embark on a timeless adventure in this fresh, narrative retelling of Pilgrim’s Progress, now brought to life in contemporary English for today’s readers! Follow Christian, burdened by the weight of his doubts and fears, as he sets out from the City of Destruction toward the Celestial City. Along the way, he faces pressures such as traversing the Slough of Despond, standing firm in the face of Apollyon, and navigating the dazzling snares of Vanity Fair, all which threaten to pull him from the path of following Christ. With each step, ...

George Orwell's paean to the end of an idyllic era in British history, Coming Up for Air is a poignant account of one man's attempt to recapture childhood innocence as war looms on the horizon. George Bowling, 45, mortgaged, married with children, is an insurance salesman with an expanding waistline, a new set of false teeth - and a desperate desire to escape his dreary life. He fears modern times - since, in 1939, the Second World War is imminent - foreseeing food queues, soldiers, secret police and tyranny.

Texan billionaire General Midwinter will stop at nothing to bring down the USSR - even if it puts the whole world at risk. The fourth and final novel featuring the cynical, insolent narrator of The IPCRESS File sees him sent from his shabby Soho office to bone-freezing Helsinki in order to penetrate Midwinter's vast anti-Communist network - and stop a deadly virus from wiping out the planet.

Josef Vadassy, a Hungarian refugee and language teacher living in France, is enjoying his first break for years in a small hotel on the Riviera. But when he takes his holiday photographs to be developed at a local chemists, he suddenly finds himself mistaken for a Gestapo agent, and a charge of espionage is levelled at him. To prove himself innocent to the French police, he must discover which one of his fellow guests at his pension is the real spy. As he desperately tries to uncover the true culprit's identity, Vadassy must risk his job, his safety and everything he holds dear.

Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, a collection of narratives written between 1387 and 1400, tells of a group of 30 people from all layers of society who pass the time along their pilgrimage to Canterbury by telling stories to one another, their interaction mediated (at times) by the affable host - Chaucer himself. Naxos AudioBooks’ third volume presents the tales of six people, here in an unabridged modern verse translation (by Frank Ernest Hill, 1935).

Burmese Days describes corruption and imperial bigotry in a society where, 'after all, natives were natives'. When Flory, a white timber merchant, befriends Indian Dr Veraswami, he defies this orthodoxy. The doctor is in danger: U Po Kyin, a corrupt magistrate, is plotting his downfall. The only thing that can save him is membership of the all-white Club, and Flory can help. Flory's life is changed further by the arrival of beautiful Elizabeth Lackersteen from Paris, who offers an escape from loneliness and the 'lie' of colonial life.