People love and need animals. They keep them in their homes and on their farms. They enjoy going to zoos, and watching animals on films and on TV.
It is beautiful to look at, hard to reach, and terribly difficult to climb. Winds of 200 kilometres per hour or more scream across it day and night, while the temperature falls to -20 °C or lower. Every year, some who try to climb the highest mountain in the world do not return. But for a century people have been coming to climb Everest - some alone, some in groups, but all with a dream of …
Murder in the twelfth century is no different from murder today. There is still a dead body, though this time with an arrow through the heart instead of a bullet. There is still a need to bury the dead, to comfort the living - and to catch the murderer. When Brother Cadfael comes to a village in the Welsh hills, he finds himself doing all three of those things. And there is nothing simple ab…
Sometimes I think this search is hopeless. So much has happened since I last saw my friends. Perhaps they have died or the rebels have taken them away. But I know I have to find Laker. I know she needs me. In a country torn by war, it is easy to stop hoping. All Atita has is an old photograph. She does not even know if she will recognize Laker after all these years... Bookworms World Stor…
If you wake up in the night and hear a tap running somewhere in the house, what do you do? You get up, of course, and go and turn the tap off. A little later you hear the tap running again. You are alone in the house, and you know you turned the tap off. What do you do then? The ghosts in these stories all have unfinished business with the living world. They come back from the grave to conti…
At home we started with an innocent life. Walking home from village dances across pale wet fields, looking at birds on the moonlit lake, playing a tune across the water in the early morning with no other sound in the clear cold air. Innocence and experience, loss and longing, humour and sadness run hand in hand through these stories. Bookworms World Stories collect stories written in Engl…
is night in the south seas near Tahiti, and the ship HMS Bounty has begun the long voyage home to England. But the sailors on the ship are angry men, and they have swords and guns. They pull the captain out of bed and take him up on deck. He tries to run, but a sailor holds a knife to his neck. "Do that again, Captain Bligh, and you're a dead man!' he says. The mutiny on the Bounty hap…
"Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change"
When Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley leave school, their feet are set on very different paths. Kind, foolish Amelia returns to her comfortable home and wealthy family, to await a suitable marriage, while Becky must look out for herself, earning her own living in a hard world. But Becky is neither kind nor foolish, and with her quick brain and keen eye for a chance, her fortunes soon rise, whil…
Everyday life in Baltimore, USA, is full of problems-getting the washing done, buying groceries and dog food, avoiding the neighbors After the death of his son and the departure of his wife, Macon's attempts to run his own life become increasingly desperate - and more and more odd. Meanwhile, he has to get on with his work, writing tourist guides for business people. Then his dog Edward s…