In the secluded Dutch territory of Sleepy Hollow, nebbish schoolmaster Ichabod Crane competes with the town hero for the hand of Katrina Van Tassel, the 18-year-old daughter and sole child of a wealthy farmer. As Crane leaves a party at the Van Tassel's farm one autumn evening, he is pursued by the Headless Horseman, an apparition said to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper snuffed out by a stray cannonball.

The modern audience hasn't had a chance to truly appreciate the unknowing dread that readers would have felt when reading Bram Stoker's original 1897 manuscript. Most modern productions employ campiness or sound effects to try to bring back that gothic tension, but we've tried something different. By returning to Stoker's original storytelling structure - a series of letters and journal entries voiced by Jonathan Harker, Dr. Van Helsing, and other characters - with an all-star cast of narrators, we've sought to recapture its originally intended horror and power.

Rip Van Winkle lives in a nice village at the foot of New York's Catskill Mountains. One autumn day he escapes his nagging wife by wandering up the mountains. After encountering strangely dressed men, rumored to be the ghosts of Henry Hudson's crew, who are playing nine-pins, and after drinking some of their liquor, he settles down under a shady tree and falls asleep. He wakes up 20 years later and returns to his village.

In these wonderful short stories, Washington Irving created two of the earliest, most endearing and enduring characters in all of American literature. Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane (not to mention the Headless Horseman) will keep you smiling as they wrestle with the strange and fantastic forces, characters and events that baffle and terrify.

In 1307, as they struggled to secure their last strongholds in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Templars fell afoul of the vindictive and impulsive king of France. On Friday, October 13, hundreds of brothers were arrested en masse, imprisoned, tortured, and disbanded amid accusations of lurid sexual misconduct and heresy. They were tried by the Vatican in secret proceedings. But were they heretics or victims of a ruthlessly repressive state?

Three bears come home from a bicycling trip through the woods to find a little girl "all nice and cozy and fast asleep" in Baby Bear's bed.

Merlin Mission books 1-8 of the number-one New York Times best-selling Magic Tree House series, available together for the first time ever! Magic Tree House Merlin Missions are more challenging adventures for the experienced Magic Tree House fan. In each adventure Merlin the magician sends Jack and Annie on an adventure in the magic tree house.

The Grinch, whose heart is two sizes too small, hates Who-ville's holiday celebrations, and plans to steal all the presents to prevent Christmas from coming. To his amazement, Christmas comes anyway, and the Grinch discovers the true meaning of the holiday.

Noah, his sister Megan, and their best friends, Richie and Ella, live next door to the zoo. Megan is the first to notice the puzzling behavior of some of the animals. One day Megan disappears, and her brother and their friends realize it’s up to them to find her. Their only choice is to follow a series of clues and sneak into the zoo. But once inside, will they discover there’s much more to the Clarksville City Zoo than they could ever have guessed?

When Alice tumbles down, down, down a rabbit-hole one hot summer's afternoon in pursuit of a White Rabbit, she finds herself in Wonderland. And there begin the fantastical adventures that will see her experiencing extraordinary changes in size, swimming in a pool of her own tears, and attending the very maddest of tea parties.

Thoreau's classic account of the solitary life, describing his attempts to simplify his life and sort out his priorities by living alone in a cabin beside Walden Pond for nearly two years, is one of the most influential books ever written. The bible of the environmental movement, Walden vividly portrays Thoreau's reverence for nature, and his understanding of the idea that nature is made up of crucially interrelated parts.

The Boy lives in a cottage with his mother and father, and the Dragon lives in a cave on the Downs. The Boy is his only friend. The Dragon is not at all the sort of Dragon one might expect to meet, however: he's polite and friendly.

"Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie" is an epic poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published in 1847. The poem follows an Acadian girl named Evangeline and her search for her lost love Gabriel, set during the time of the expulsion of the Acadians. The idea for the poem came from Longfellow's friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Longfellow used dactylic hexameter, imitated from Greek and Latin classics, though the choice was criticized.

A meteorite from cosmic space falls to earth on a backwoods Massachusetts farm. The space rock possesses peculiar qualities and mystifies even the brightest university scientists. But it soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary meteor, as its otherworldly influence unleashes a creeping wave of despair, death, and decay into the land and its inhabitants.

In the early spring of 1845, Henry David Thoreau built and lived in a cabin near the shore of Walden Pond in rural Massachusetts. For the next two years, he enacted his own Transcendentalist experiment, living a simple life based on self-reliance, individualism, and harmony with nature. The journal he kept at that time evolved into his masterwork, Walden, an eloquent expression of a uniquely American philosophy.

In these wonderful short stories, Washington Irving created two of the earliest, most endearing and enduring characters in all of American literature. Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane (not to mention the Headless Horseman) will keep you smiling as they wrestle with the strange and fantastic forces, characters and events that baffle and terrify.

In the secluded Dutch territory of Sleepy Hollow, nebbish schoolmaster Ichabod Crane competes with the town hero for the hand of Katrina Van Tassel, the 18-year-old daughter and sole child of a wealthy farmer. As Crane leaves a party at the Van Tassel's farm one autumn evening, he is pursued by the Headless Horseman, an apparition said to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper snuffed out by a stray cannonball.

Virginia Woolf's semi-biographical novel, inspired by her life changing love affair with Vita Sackville-West, takes us on an exhilarating, fantastical roller coaster, tracing 400 years of English history, in the company of her shape-shifting, gender-bending, time-travelling hero Orlando, whose inner conflicts and triumphs challenge our preconceptions of the nature of love, the battle of the sexes, posing socal and metaphysical questions including what we now call climate change.

After 700 years of being ruled by man, the Parliament of Erl is ready to be ruled by a magical lord. Obeying the immemorial custom, the lord of Erl sends his son Alveric to fetch the King of Elfland’s daughter, Lirazel, to be his bride. Alveric makes his way to Elfland, where time passes at a rate far slower than the real world, wins her hand, and they return to Erl together. Alveric and Lirazel marry and have a son, but marriage between a mortal and a fairy princess is never simple. Lirazel struggles to adapt to the customs of humans.

Far from the Madding Crowd, which first appeared in Cornhill Magazine in monthly installments back in the late 19th century, features the love life of the young Bathsheba Everdene who is as poor as she is beautiful. Fortunately, Bathsheba's uncle leaves her his farm, which she goes to manage in the small town of Weatherbury. Before she leaves, however, she has an interesting encounter with a young farmer, Gabriel Oak, for whom she does a tremendous favor ,and he becomes indebted to her....

Fantasy, love and an exuberant celebration of English life and literature, Orlando is a uniquely entertaining story. Originally conceived by Virginia Woolf as a playful tribute to the family of her friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, Orlando's central character, a fictional embodiment of Sackville-West, changes sex from a man to a woman and lives throughout the centuries, whilst meeting historical figures of English literature.

Thoreau's classic account of the solitary life, describing his attempts to simplify his life and sort out his priorities by living alone in a cabin beside Walden Pond for nearly two years, is one of the most influential books ever written. The bible of the environmental movement, Walden vividly portrays Thoreau's reverence for nature, and his understanding of the idea that nature is made up of crucially interrelated parts.

The complete "box set" of T. H. White's epic fantasy novel of the Arthurian legend. The novel is made up of five parts: "The Sword in the Stone", "The Witch in the Wood", "The Ill-Made Knight", "The Candle in the Wind", and "The Book of Merlyn".

Based on the life of the author and members of her tribe, these stories provide a revealing glimpse into the world of the Dakota-Sioux at the turn of the last century. Part One is based on the experiences of the author, and describes a young girl growing up in a changing environment. Part Two consists of revealing stories about other members of her tribe.

"Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie" is an epic poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published in 1847. The poem follows an Acadian girl named Evangeline and her search for her lost love Gabriel, set during the time of the expulsion of the Acadians. The idea for the poem came from Longfellow's friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Longfellow used dactylic hexameter, imitated from Greek and Latin classics, though the choice was criticized.

Wessex Tales, a collection of short stories including "The Three Strangers", "The Withered Arm", and "The Distracted Preacher", deals with a number of timeless themes seen so often in Hardy’s work: marriage, class, revenge, and disappointed love. Many of the tales have a supernatural tinge, and all are set around Hardy’s much loved homeland.

Allan Quatermain, hero of King Solomon's mines, tells a moving tale of his first wife, the Dutch-born Marie Marais, and the adventures that were linked to her beautiful, tragic history. This moving story depicts the tumultuous political era of the 1830s, involving the Boers, French colonists and the Zulu tribe in the Cape colony of South Africa. Hate and suspicion run high between the home government and the Dutch subjects.

This essay by Thoreau first published in 1849, argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule their consciences. It goes on to say that individuals have a duty to avoid allowing the government to make them the agents of injustice. The quote: "That government is best which governs least," sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine, actually was first found in this essay. Thoreaus' thoughts were motivated by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican-American War but they are still relevant and resonate today.

These are the valiant and lyrically descriptive letters, written in 1873, by Isabella Bird, a courageous and spirited Englishwoman, telling her sister of her adventures on horseback over 800 miles of American wilderness.

With a horse between his thighs and a weapon in his grip, the dashing Brigadier Etienne Gerard, Colonel of the Hussars of Conflans, gallops through the Napoleonic campaigns on secret missions for his beloved Emperor and his country. He encounters danger and hair-breadth escapes but never loses his bravado, his eye for a pretty girl, his boastfulness or his enormous vanity.