Outside the ruins of San Francisco, a former UC Berkeley professor of literature recounts the chilling sequence of events which led to his current lowly state – a gruesome pandemic which killed nearly every living soul on the planet, in a matter of days. Modern civilization tottered and fell, and a new race of barbarians – the western world's brutalized workers – assumed power everywhere. Over the space of a few decades, all learning has be ...
In the mid 1800s, Pyncheon is still a revered namesake in Salem, with the gloomy Pyncheon mansion serving as a stark reminder of the family's upper class history. However, the house – unique for its seven gables – has a dark and deadly past. Its current occupant, the older and unmarried Hepzibah Pyncheon, is all but destitute and unwilling to accept any assistance from her wealthy but unrelenting cousin, Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon. To support h ...
"What Polly Found in her Stocking" is a delightful Christmas poem that tells what a girl of the late 1800s might have gotten from Santa – if she were very good. ...
In the 1840s Charles Dickens wrote 5 short stories with strong social and moral messages. The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home, is the third of these stories. Following the home life of John Peerybingle, the story introduces the many people in John's family and life along with a cricket that acts as the guardian angel of the family. Like its predecessors, this story also contains heavy social and moral implications. However it di ...
This glorious new audio production of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel Little Women; Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy (the first of four books) gives us the March sisters in one evanescent year, from Christmas to Christmas, as they dance back and forth on the delicate, tender line between childhood and adulthood. By turns as achingly beautiful as it is humorous and wise, as you listen you will fall in love with rough-and-tumble Jo, graceful Meg, gen ...
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, originally published in Colliers Magazine on May 27th, 1922. The story follows Benjamin's life from his birth in 1860. However he is no ordinary child, as he has the appearance of a 70 year old man, already capable of speech. His family soon realizes that Benjamin is aging in reverse, becoming younger as the years go by. The fascinating story looks at his triumphs ...
Written as an introductory story to The Piazza Tales, the protagonist of The Piazza, idealizes a radiant spot on the mountain he looks upon from his piazza. Traveling to the spot he realizes it is a house, occupied by the unhappy girl Marianna, who longs to see the lucky individual who lives in the white house she looks upon from her window. The narrator realizes he has been the object of a fantasy alike to his own, and leaves thinking how all i ...
America's favorite jungle hero returns for a third time in The Beasts of Tarzan. The legendary Tarzan claims his birthright title as Lord Greystoke, and starts a small family with his now wife Jane. But just when things were going right, the evil Rokoff kidnaps his infant son Jack, luring Tarzan into a trap. After Rokoff exiles him on an island near the African coast, Tarzan uses his skills learned from the jungle to win the favor of variou ...
