A wonderful children's book filled with engaging stories about various farmyard animals. Each book ending with a moral which gently encourages children towards better behaviour and attitudes.

Twenty-year-old Mary Alice is bored with her home life and envious of the beautiful, poised, popular girls she sees at parties. At her mother's advice, she reluctantly visits her Godmother in New York, who teaches Mary Alice a little homemade "magic" and the one great Secret that will put her at ease with other people. How can Mary Alice learn to use these gifts to bring happiness into her own life and other lives? Although this charming novelette is subtitled "A True Fairy Story," it reveals that most of the "magic" in life can be found within ourselves. (Introduction by Jan MacGillivray)

The story follows the adventures of Sir Philip Harclay, who returns to medieval England to find that the castle seat and estate of his friend Lord Lovel have been usurped. A series of revelations, horrors and betrayals climax in a scene of single combat in which good battles evil for the return of the prize.

Clarence Day, Jr., best known for his work Life with Father, presents a satirical speculation on how the world might be different if we apes had not risen to prominence, but rather one of the other species had become dominant in our place.

Layard was a curiosity to sociologists. The planet supported thriving tribes of natives but they were genderless. How could tribes form without families? But Gavin Duncan didn’t care. He had come to Layard to farm vua plants. Their berries cured mental illnesses and were one of the most expensive commodities in the galaxy. He was going to make his fortune if he could just keep the Cytha at bay, a big, dumb animal that could munch through 10 rows of vua in a night. Despite native superstitions he was going to have to hunt and kill the pest if he was to protect his crop...

In a future time, the solar system is powered by one energy source, controlled by one huge organisation, which has plans to use this control to dominate the planets. Unknown to them, a couple of maverick scientists accidentally develop a completely new form of energy supply and threaten the corporation's monopoly. Naturally, the corporation can't allow this to happen... A stunning story about the manipulation of pure energy, climaxing in interstellar conflict.

From Astounding Stories of 1932. Earth is being attacked by horrible black monsters that appear from nowhere and destroy and kill everything and everyone in their paths. Nothing affects them, nothing stops them; they are impervious to all weapons. Earth is doomed. But there is one hope and it rests on the shoulders of 98 brave men. Can they do it? can they find a way of retaliating? Listen and find out.

Clifford Simak deals with the implications of time travel in his own unique way in this story. What if a group of guys did it on their own, without any help from government or industry? On a shoestring,so to speak? Would anyone believe them? What would you do if you could go back 150,000 years to a time when mastodons and saber toothed tigers roamed North America? And what happens when they run out of money? All these questions are explored in the usual humorous, wry Simak way in this story.

Barks and Purrs is a collection of seven episodes in the lives of Toby-Dog, a French Bulldog, and Kiki-the-Demure, a Maltese cat, living in a comfortable household. The episodes cover a hot afternoon, a train ride, and what happened when dinner was late or their mistress was ill. We hear about the first fire in autumn, a heavy storm, and about a visitor in the household.Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette-Willy was throughout her life a controversial French novelist. She published around 50 novels; the best known is “Gigi”.

"And now, mamma, until your tea is ready, we know what you must do," said the children, in a breath. "Tell us a story—a 'real, truly' fairy tale, about a giant and a dwarf, lots and lots of fairies, a prince and a beautiful princess with hair to her very feet, a champion with a magic sword, a dragon-chariot, a witch dressed in snake-skin—and, if you can, an ogre. Don't punish anybody but the witch and the ogre; and please don't have any moral, only let everybody 'live in peace and die in a pot of grease,' at the end of it...

When two children come to stay with their cousin, they immediately realize something is wrong, but no one will tell them what. Their cousin is strangely altered: nervous, preoccupied, hardly aware of their existence. They soon discover that a conflict is brewing among the hills and farms of the Medford Valley, one whose origins reach back over a century. They must piece it together from scattered clues, and from the stories told to them by a mysterious bee keeper and his daughter. This 1922 Newbery Honor Book tells of the traits that run in a family—honor, stubborn pride, and a dark lust for wealth—and how they shape the destinies of three generations. (Introduction by Peter Eastman)

These short stories, perhaps we might call them modern parables, are not the usual fare of warm and fuzzy Christmas stories (pleasing as those are) but rather life events and crises triggered by Christmas, present or imminent. Brady was a journalist, historian, adventure writer, and Episcopal priest.

Set against the backdrop of a rapidly industrializing England, the bewildering shift in social structure, the fading away of traditions and the advent of new ways of life, The Rainbow by DH Lawrence depicts how one family's story becomes the story of a society. Originally planned as a novel titled The Sisters, Lawrence finally split the theme into two separate novels after many revisions and rewrites. The Rainbow is the first novel in the Brangwen family saga. Tom Brangwen is a small time farmer in rural Nottinghamshire...

If you have read DH Lawrence's The Rainbow, you'd certainly want to read the sequel, Women in Love. Published in 1920, the two books were originally meant to be a single work, spanning several generations of the Brangwen family, especially the women. However, a complicated publishing history, delays and editorial revisions, followed by the hostile reception and controversies that faced The Rainbow led to a gap of five years between the two books. Yet, by 21st century standards, Women in Love seems almost tame, and modern-day readers may well be bewildered by the amount of criticism it generated among the custodians of morals in an earlier age...

This intimate portrait of a coal-miner’s family fastens on each member in turn: Walter Morel, the collier; Gertrude, his wife; and the children: William, Annie, Arthur, and Paul. When Mrs. Morel begins to be estranged from her husband because of his poor financial sense and his drinking habits, she comes to inhabit the lives of her children – most particularly, her sons. She is determined that they will grow to be something more than men that come home blackened with coal dust every day and roaring with drink every night...

Brief Encounter meets Tristan und Isolde – on the Isle of Wight, under a vast sky florid with stars. The consequence is tragic indeed for one of the parties, Siegmund, when he sacrifices family life for a few days’ transcendent rapture. His lover, the self-contained Helena, is strong enough to bear a return to the scruffy suburbs. Redemption of a kind is granted to the deserted wife, Beatrice. But between these robust Lawrentian women Siegmund is cancelled out. His love-death is no cosmic swoon but a sordid exit in an unkempt box-room.In this very British romance, there is no earthly escape from outworn attachments and life’s deadening routine…