A sequel to Oldtown Folks, featuring some of the same characters, these are 15 charming short stories told by ole' Sam Lawson to entertain Horace and Bill, two impressionable, curious and clever young boys of Oldtown (a fictional 1850's New England village), during evenings gathered around the hearth, or roaming with Sam around the countryside. Stowe faithfully and masterfully captures many of the colloquial expressions, superstitions, beliefs, customs and habits of the period that have almost completely faded from modern American culture, as well as conveying many truths about the human condition that haven't changed a bit. ~

Frado is a colored girl, living in the USA a few years before the Civil War. She is abandoned by her own white mother in the house of the Bellmont's- where she is treated badly. This is a sad book, but Frado's cheerfulness and dignity will make you love her until the end. (Introduction by Stav Nisser)

Like the later and more famous novel Middlemarch, Deerbrook describes the life of country people in a fictional English town. The Grey family live in one of the loveliest houses in Deerbrook, but a change in their lives is going to take place... The Ibbotson sisters, Hester and Margaret, orphaned distant cousins of Mr. Grey. Like in Jane Austen's novels, we see how the sisters are trying to advance themselves. In Victorian England, the chief way for women to "advance themselves" is to marry well. But will they succeed? And if they succeed, will they be happy?

Known primarily for her children's books, Harriet T. Comstock would occasionally depart from that genre and showcase her writing talent in adult prose as well. Janet of the Dunes is one such departure wherein she masterfully takes us into the lives of the bold men and women who tended those life saving stations along the seaboard which many a ship relied upon for their safety. They were simple people, large of heart and as close-knit as a tiny community can and must ever be, and they, above all else, took their duties very seriously...

Harrington Strong was a pseudonym used by author Johnston McCulley, creator of the character Zorro and many others. The Brand of Silence – A Detective Story finds Sidney Prale returning to New York after ten years during which he sought his fortune. But he finds New York a very changed place, and even more distressing, he finds that his old friends are now turning their backs on him, his old haunts no longer welcome him, and there seems to be a conspiracy against him.Why can’t he receive service...

The Lancashire Witches is a highly fictionalised account of the activities of the notorious witches Demdike, Chattox and Alice Nutter who, together with others terrorised the district of Lancashire around Pendle Hill and the Forest of Bowland during the early seventeenth century. The witches named in the book were real enough, if not as witches then as people. Ainsworth, in his story brings in the dissolution of Whalley Abbey and the historic families of Assheton, Braddyll and Nowell and takes us through to the final trial and execution at Lancaster Castle in 1612. (Summary by Andy Minter)

This is a collection of short science fiction stories by various writers, circa 1930. Writers include Paul Ernst, Miles Breuer, Ray Cummings, Sewell Wright, and others.

For Treasure Bound is one of the earlier novels by Harry Collingwood (William Joseph Cosens Lancaster), published in 1897. We follow the hero, whose name is incidentally also Harry Collingwood, on a quest to the pacific islands for treasure and his marooned father, through all the perils he encounters on his journey, such as pirates, sea monsters, and beautiful young ladies. (Summary by Carolin)

After his father died, Captain Saint Leger and his family are left destitute. However, the Saint Legers have a family secret: an ancestor is said to have buried a vast fortune in gold and jewels somewhere in the Eastern Seas. The catch: all directions are encrypted. Nevertheless, Captain Saint Leger decides to take a chance and sails east. A journey full of adventure begins, including pirates, storms and mutiny...

Jason dinAlit, an inhabitant of the planet Porgostrosaand, is a fast talking, conniving, tough as nails, gun toting gambler whose ethics wax and wane with each planet he travels to. He also has amazing psionic abilities which means he is gifted with a variety of psychic abilities including telekinesis, telepathy, pyrokinesis and a host of other interesting capabilities. He is not above using these to tip the odds in his favor while gambling. A chance meeting with Kerk Pyrrus who is the Ambassador of planet Pyrrus ends up with dinAlit traveling back with the Ambassador to Pyrrus...

Once in a generation, a man is born with a heightened sense of empathy. Brion Brandd used this gift to win the Twenties, an annual physical and mental competition among the best and smartest people on Anvhar. But scarcely able to enjoy his victory, Brandd is swept off to the hellish planet Dis where he must use his heightened sense of empathy to help avert a global nuclear holocaust by negotiating with the blockading fleet, traversing the Disan underworld, and cracking the mystery of the savagely ruthless magter. Summary by Great Plains.

The Ethical Engineer also known as Deathworld II finds our hero Jason dinAlt captured to face justice for his crimes, but the ever-wily gambler crashes his transport on a primitive planet populated by clans that hoard knowledge. It’s a difficult situation for a guy who just wants to get back to Pyrrus. – The Ethical Engineer was first published in the July and August 1963 issues of Analog Science Fact & Fiction.

"It might seem a little careless to lose track of something as big as a battleship ... but interstellar space is on a different scale of magnitude. But a misplaced battleship—in the wrong hands!—can be most dangerous." The world class con man and thief known as the Stainless Steel Rat (diGriz) has another very big problem to solve and this science fiction novella by the great Harry Harrison will see if he can solve it and perhaps four or five more like it before this fascinating and funny tale is finished. 'Use a thief to catch a thief' sounds great but it sometimes has unexpected results.

A quiet backwater outpost on Mars gets a surprise in the form of a new police recruit - in a box! Yep, it's a prototype robot cop sent to the backwater station for testing. And Harrison tells the strange, funny and scary things that begin to happen after that, as only he can.

The human race has reached the stars, colonized many planets and done amazing things in all areas of scientific progress. But humans are still humans and remain both honorable and not so honorable; some with high ideals and others with very low ones indeed. So why hasn't war occurred in several centuries among the hundreds of planets? Has man really changed? Not on your life it hasn't! Read how science has given man peace but at what cost?

This is a collection of 3 of Harry Harrison marvelous early stories that were published in Galaxy, Analog and Fantastic Universe. The Repairman (1958) is a straight fun SF story of a man getting a job done. It is most typical of his later style in series like the Stainless Steel Rat; Toy Shop (1962), a short piece exploring bureaucratic blindness and one ingenious way around it and The Velvet Glove (1956), my favorite for its writing style, fun perspective, sly social commentary on the scene in 1956 and just plain delightful imagination. And he manages to pack excitement and mystery in at the same time.

Merton of the Movies is a comedy that centers around Merton Gill, an aspiring dramatic artist from Simsbury, Illinois who makes his way to Hollywood to become a serious actor. How could Merton fail in attaining his dreams after finishing a correspondence course from the General Film Production Company of Stebbinsville, Arkansas, certifying him to be a competent screen actor? Harry Leon Wilson, the author, was a very popular humor writer in the first decades of the 20th century. This book was made into film several times, the last in 1947 starring Red Skelton.

Every boy and girl—and for that matter every man and woman, too—rejoices when the winter snows have vanished and the earth once more puts on her beautiful dress of green, for then the flowers wake from their sleep and clothe the earth with beauty. Because all boys and girls love flowers, those of them who read this book will be interested in the beautiful stories they have to tell, loving them even more when they know something of their past history and some of the events with which they are associated.

Struwwelpeter (Slovenly Peter) is an illustrated collection of humorous children’s poems describing ludicrous and usually violent punishments for naughty behavior. Hoffmann, a Frankfurt physician, wanted to buy a picture book for his son for Christmas in 1844. Not impressed by what the stores had to offer, he instead bought a notebook and wrote his own stories and pictures. While Struwwelpeter is somewhat notorious for its perceived brutal treatment of the erring children, it has been influential on many later children’s books, most notably Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Hienrich Hoffmann was a German psychiatrist and doctor. He had written poetry and sketches for his son, and was persuaded to have a collection of these printed.The stories were not perceived as cruel or overly moral by Hoffmann's contemporaries.This American version contains a few of the stories from the original German "Struwwelpeter" publication.

Michael Kohlhaas is an 1811 novella by Heinrich von Kleist, based on a 16th-century story of Hans Kohlhase. Both the theme (a fanatical quest for justice) and the style (existentialist detachment posing as a chronicle) are surprisingly modern. They resonated with other writers more than a century after it was written. Kafka devoted one of only two public appearances in his whole life to reading passages from Michael Kohlhaas. Kafka said that he "could not even think of" this work "without being moved to tears and enthusiasm."

Letters from a Cat: published by her mistress for the benefit of all cats and the amusement of little children is a collection of letters that a little girl receives from her pet while she is away from home. They tell of her pet’s adventures and misadventures. The book includes a preface which gives a little biography of the cat including its sad demise. H.H. was the alias of Helen Maria Hunt Jackson (1830 –1885) who is better known for her novel Ramona in which she dramatized the mistreatment of Native Americans and which formed part of her campaign for improved treatment of Native Americans by the U.S. Government.