Johanna Ward

An American boy goes to live with his grandfather in England, where he becomes heir to a title and a fortune. He teaches his aristocratic family about the importance of charity and compassion.

Cousin Bette (1846) is considered to be Balzac's last great novel, and a key work in his Human Comedy. Set in the Paris of the 1830s and 1840s, it is a complex tale of the devastating effect of violent jealousy and sexual passion. Against a meticulously detailed backdrop of a post-Napoleonic France struggling with massive industrial and economic change, Balzac's characters span many classes of society, from impoverished workers and wealthy courtesans...

Written by British-born author Frances Hodgson Burnett and first published in 1905, 'A Little Princess' tells the story of young Sara Crewe, affluent daughter of a diamond merchant who was brought from India to London by her doting father to join Miss Minchin's school. While at first her life of privilege continues as she is treated like a princess, the tragic death of her father and failure of his business change everything. Faced with the worst...

Classic fiction. On the grounds of Misselthwaite, her Uncle Archibald's estate near the Yorkshire moors, nine-year-old Mary Lennox finds a walled-in garden that has been locked securely for years. With the help of Dickon Sowerby, a young local boy who can charm animals, Mary cultivates the garden, an experiences that both improves her health and raises her spirits. Ultimately, the secret garden proves beneficial not only to to Mary, but to her sickly...

A Swiss orphan is heartbroken when she must leave her beloved grandfather and their happy home in the mountains to go to school and to care for an invalid girl in the city. "A hardcover edition of the classic Swiss novel, in Helen B. Dole's English translation and with illustrations by William Sharp from the 1945 edition"-- Provided by publisher.

"We seek him here! we seek him there! Those Frenchies seek him everywhere! Is he in heaven? Is he in hell? That demmed elusive Pimpernel?" Sir Percy thought he left his enemy vanquished, humiliated, and debased in Calais. Oh, how foolish he was. Now Chauvelin is bent on revenge. As punishment for letting the Scarlet Pimpernel escape the clutches of the French Republic, Chauvelin was demoted from the ranks of Robspierre's trusted...

The Enchanted Castle (1907) is a children's fantasy novel by English writer Edith Nesbit. Using elements of magic and mystery familiar to readers of her beloved Bastable and Psammead Trilogies, Nesbit crafts a tale of wonder and adventure for children and adults alike. While on a school holiday, children Jerry, Jimmy, and Kathy explore the open landscape of rural southwestern England. One day, they discover an immense country estate, designed like...

Setting out for the Saint Giles leper colony outside Shrewsbury, Brother Cadfael has more pressing matters on his mind than the grand wedding coming to his abbey. Yet as fate would have it, Cadfael arrives at Saint Giles just as the nuptial party passes the colony's gates. He sees the fragile bride, looking like a prisoner between her two stern guardians, and the bridegroom-an arrogant, fleshy aristocrat old enough to be her grandfather-and he quickly...

Oscar Wilde's collection of fairy stories, which he made up for his own sons, are among the greatest and most poignant classics for children and adults alike. Humor, pathos, delightful little characters abound in the stories of The Happy Prince and the Swallow who agrees to keep him company despite approaching winter; the Selfish Giant, who doesn't want children playing in his garden, and the Remarkable Rocket. In addition, there are those who are...

This gripping novel explores the effects of violence on the journalists and artists who have dedicated themselves to representing it. In the aftermath of September 11, reeling from the effects of reporting from New York City, two British journalists, a writer, Stephen Sharkey, and a photographer, Ben Frobisher, part ways. Stephen returns to England shattered; he divorces his duplicitous wife and quits his job. Ben follows the war on terror to Afghanistan...