Family Life Classics

Kelly Whitely is at the height of her career, selling the latest miracle drug to doctors and pharmacies across the country. But concerns about the side effects have her longing for the day when she can quit her high-paying job and really focus on saving her marriage and teenage daughter. She keeps trying to talk to her husband, Daniel, about it, but every time she brings it up, he retreats further and further away from her.

Presented in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband (John) has rented an old mansion for the summer and the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, she is forbidden from working, but encouraged to eat well and get plenty of exercise and air, so she can recuperate from what he calls a temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency, a diagnosis common to women in that period.

Sicilia, prima metà del Settecento. Marianna Ucrìa, una bambina che appartiene a una nobile famiglia...

It starts with a simple wish, and Emma Davies hardly notices when it comes true. She’s too preoccupied with a life she isn’t happy in - the spark in her marriage has fizzled, her career is headed nowhere and her boss is a misogynist. Her teenage daughter has grown distant, and her heart breaks daily for her teenage son with cerebral palsy. But soon Emma discovers her wishes are coming true, and she realizes that she has been given the power to change her life. Either that, or she’s going insane.

A classic, the Russian masterpiece by Turgenev, held as one of the greatest works of 19th Century fiction. The novel is thought of as a response to the growing cultural divide and alienation between liberals of the 1830s/1840s and the rapidly growing nihilist movement. These two philosophies were contrasted with the conservative Slavophiles, who believed that Russia's greatness lay in its traditional spirituality.

Life is tough and cheerless for Billy Casper, a troubled teenager growing up in the small Yorkshire mining town of Barnsley. Treated as a failure at school, and unhappy at home, Billy discovers a new passion in life when he finds Kes, a kestrel hawk. Billy identifies with her silent strength, and she inspires in him the trust and love that nothing else can, discovering through her the passion missing from his life.

Desperate to escape a harsh and narrow regime, two runaways unwittingly flee headlong into the centre of a terrible battle. This first sequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe includes all the hallmarks of its famous predecessor, though this time the fate of Narnia is wound up in the lives of its own children, and a talking horse!

This short novel follows the fate of Sissy Jupe, a warm-hearted circus child, and the family that adopts her. Deserted by her ailing father, Sissy is taken into the cold household of the Gradgrind family, which operates a school. The "eminently practical" Thomas Gradgrind believes only in facts and figures and has raised his children accordingly, thoroughly suppressing the imaginative side of their nature, and the consequences are devastating.

It is 1919 shortly after the termination of the 1st European holocaust. Henry Earlforward, a middle aged North London Bookseller, courts and marries Violet Arb, a widow who has inherited the confectioners shop opposite his own premises in Riceyman Square. Henry and Violet engage the services of Elsie as ‘charwoman’.

Give Grandpa lots of love with help from The Very Hungry Caterpillar in this lively audiobook starring Eric Carle’s classic storybook character! The perfect listen for Grandpa’s birthday, baby announcements, National Grandparent’s Day, and more!

Lida Fisher knows that her beloved husband, Quincy, will die soon as the result of a rare and terrible brain rejection syndrome. But there is one hope. If Quincy consents to switch brains with one of the alien beings that have arrived from the other side of the galaxy, he will live on - albeit in the body of a starfish. And that means Lida must agree to let a new man into her life and her bed, one with the face and body of her adored husband but with the mind of an alien stranger.

When George, the eldest son of Matthew Silverman, announces he won’t follow in his father’s footsteps as editor of the family-owned local newspaper, the family finds itself on a course for change. The newspaper has been going for nearly 100 years. With younger brother Alexander and sisters Loraine and Alison growing up fast, too, and gradual progress in the world around them, can Matthew do what’s best for them all?

Die südfranzösische Stadt Plassan ist der Ursprung der bürgerlichen Familien Rougon und Macquart, deren weit verzweigte Familiengeschichte hier ihren Anfang nimmt. Im Zuge des Staatsstreiches vom 2. Dezember 1851 und den damit verbundenen Aufständen in ganz Frankreich, gelingt es einigen Familienmitgliedern durch Intrigen, Betrug und Verrat sich gesellschaftlich in der Kleinstadt zu etablieren; andere stürzen grausam ab.

Pubblicato a Zurigo nel 1880, Heidi è un tipico romanzo di formazione la cui protagonista, rimasta orfana in tenera età, viene affidata da una zia alle cure del nonno paterno, il burbero e misantropo Zio dell'Alpe che si è ritirato a vivere in una baita alpina. Tra le alpi svizzere la bambina cresce libera e spensierata fino al giorno in cui la zia viene a riprenderla per affidarla ad una ricca famiglia di Francoforte la cui figlia, Clara, è immobilizzata su di una sedia a rotelle. Le bambine diventano subito molto amiche.

Paddington Bear always manages to find himself in tricky situations, sometimes extraordinary situations. Like the time he had a difficult encounter with a policeman or when he found himself in deep water with a newspaper reporter. But since arriving from his native Peru after an earthquake Paddington has always felt at home with the Brown family who found him on Paddington station.

Un riche misanthrope brouillé avec le monde entier à l'exception de ses fidèles employés, Mr et Mrs Boffin, meurt après avoir fait fortune en exploitant les décharges de Londres (dustheaps). Son testament stipule que sa fortune est transmise à son fils, John Harmon, qu'il ne voit plus, mais à condition qu'il revienne du lointain étranger où il s'est établi - sans doute l'Afrique du SudN 5 -, pour la recevoir. Cette disposition est assortie d'une autre clause : Harmon doit épouser une jeune femme qu'il ne connaît pas, Miss Bella Wilfer.

H.G. Wells is best known for his science fiction, but some of his greatest works were in other genres. "The Passionate Friends" is a love story. It also is a story about dreams, despair, jealousy, sex, the struggle against social convention, the future of civilization, and much much more. It is written by a father to his son, "not indeed to the child you are now, but to the man you are going to be." He writes it so that one day, perhaps when he is dead, his grown son can read it and rediscover him as a friend and equal.

Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of an impoverished family, must navigate a world of desire and romance once she meets Alec d'Urberville. The son of a rich widow, he takes a fancy to her and gets her a position as the poultry keeper on his family's estate. However, her good fortune is soon complicated by Alec's libertine ways, and Tess returns home shamed. Once recovered, she separates herself from the gossip by finding work at a dairy farm outside the village.

A Nebraska native, Claude Wheeler wants to attend the State University but instead lives a typical college life as a Temple College student. However, when his successful father decides to expand the family farm, Claude's reality is changed forever as he's forced to drop out to help realize his father's dream. Later, as war wages on in Europe, he enlists, hoping to escape his dreary fate and find purpose.

In the seventh book of the Anne of Green Gables series, Anne and Gilbert Blythe have been happily married for over a decade and have six children. The children take center stage in this story, as they befriend the four children of a new minister in tow, John Meredith. After John’s wife died, he has buried himself into theological studies, and lets his children run free. And though the children are generally kind and loyal, the townsfolk only really notice them on the occasions where they’re getting into trouble.