CLASSIC FICTION (CHILDREN'S / TEENAGE). Shipwrecked on an unchartered island, the Swiss Family Robinson - mother, father and four young boys - make the most of their predicament, adapting to the island and turning the absence of civilization to their advantage. Through perseverance, hard work and self reliance, they become masters of their new environment. Their experience is colourful, creative and filled with exciting adventures. This illustrated...

"Natty Bumppo is a bold young man raised by Native Americans. Nicknamed Deerslayer for his courageous attitude that sets him apart from his peers, Natty is adventurous and kind. As a firm believer that all living beings should respect the gifts of nature, Natty despises violence. However, as he comes of age and experiences the antagonistic relationship between Native Americans and white settlers, violence is difficult to avoid. With the help of his...

"The canonical American masterpiece of sin, guilt, and revenge, in an authoritative new edition from Penguin Classics with a foreword by Tom Perrotta At once retrospective and radically new, The Scarlet Letter portrays seventeenth-century Puritan New England, a time period irreversibly encoded in the American identity. Hawthorne built one of the most incisive and devastating human dramas ever written out of a community and its outcasts: Hester...

Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, "a man of humanity," as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking,...

"Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), which was originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. Alcott wrote the books rapidly over several months at the request of her publisher. The novel follows the lives of four sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March, detailing their passage from childhood to womanhood, and is loosely based on the author and her three sisters. Little Women was an immediate commercial and...

An absorbing memoir by Mark Twain of his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War. It is also a travel book, recounting his intriguing trip along the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans many years after the War.

Black Beauty is a perennial children's favourite, one which has never been out of print since its publication in 1877. It is a moralistic tale of the life of the horse related in the form of an autobiography, describing the world through the eyes of the creature. In taking this anthropomorphic approach, the author Anna Sewell broke new literary ground and her effective storytelling ability makes it very easy for the reader to accept the premise that...

"Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the original title of a novella written by the famous Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson that was first published in 1886. The work is commonly known today as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or simply Jekyll & Hyde. It is about a London lawyer named John Gabriel Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward...

"It is 1757. Across north-eastern America the armies of Britain and France struggle for ascendancy. Their conflict, however, overlays older struggles between nations of native Americans for possession of the same lands and between the native peoples and white colonisers. Through these layers of conflict Cooper threads a thrilling narrative, in which Cora and Alice Munro, daughters of a British commander on the front line of the colonial war, attempt...