Showing results for "Learning" in Historical

During the reign of Richard I, Wilfred of Ivanhoe earns his father's disapproval by falling in love with Rowena, his father's ward. His father had planned to wed her himself, and reestablish the Saxon line.

“Written with grace, empathy, and bright imagination, Learning to See gives us the vivid interior life of a remarkably resilient woman. Dorothea Lange’s story is about passion and art, love and family, but also about the sacrifices women make—and have always made—to illuminate the truth...

Stories navigating the commplicated terrain of race in America, from acclaimed writers like Toni Morrison, E.L. Doctorow, Sandra Cisneros, Sherman Alexie, and Amy Tan The editors who brought us Unsettling America and Identity Lessons have compiled a short-story anthology that focuses on...

The Earl of Cariston is faced with insuperable problems as he has completely run out of money. He has sold everything on his estate that he can, but even so there is nothing he can do to support those who rely on him and they are on the verge of starvation. In desperation he calls into his Club to find an old friend, Lord Shield, and tells him all his woes. Lord Shield is in a bad way himself, but does suggest that he visits a certain Mr. Randon who is temporarily in London and beg for his help.

Set during and after the First World War, A Very Long Engagement is the tale of a young woman's search for her fiancé who she believes might still be alive despite having officially been reported as "killed in the line of duty." Unable to walk since childhood, fearless Mathilde Donnay is undeterred in her quest as she scours the country for information about five wounded French soldiers who were brutally abandoned by their own troops. A Very Long Engagement is a mystery, a love story, and an extraordinary portrait of life in France before and after the War.

The Deerslayer is the first of the Leatherstocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper. Here we meet Natty Bumppo as a young man living in upstate New York in the early 1740s. The action begins as Bumppo, called "Deerslayer", and his friend Hurry Harry approach Lake Glimmerglass, or Oswego, where the trapper Thomas Hutter lives with his daughters, the beautiful Judith and the feeble-minded Hetty.

Sara Crewe is a very rich little girl. She first comes to England when she is seven, and her father takes her to Miss Minchin’s school in London. Then he goes back to his work in India. Sara is very sad at first, but she soon makes friends at school. But on her 11th birthday, something terrible happens, and now Sara has no family, no home, and not a penny in the world.

Internationally best-selling author Umberto Eco is a master stylist whose books, including The Name of the Rose and Baudolino, have been savored by millions around the world. Now, with The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Eco crafts another of the ambitious and breathtaking novels that are his trademark.

Rule by head or rule by heart? Elinor Dashwood is a great believer in "sense," while her exuberant younger sister Marianne feels keenly that only "sensibility" (what today we'd call passion) serves to guide the heart. Through vicissitudes and, in the case of Marianne, outright betrayal by her lover, these two women learn the value in the other's outlook, and thereby prepare themselves for later domestic bliss that is the hallmark resolution of Jane Austen's novels.

Few wars have been fought by each side with greater intensity of conviction in the rightness of its cause or with more abundant personal heroism than the War Between the States. The story begins with a great responsibility falling on Vincent Wingfield, the teenage son of a widowed Virginia plantation owner. Vincent must decide what course of action he should take when a problem arises on the plantation.

England in 1647: King Charles is in prison, and Cromwell’s men are fighting the King’s men. These are dangerous times for everybody. The four Beverley children have no parents; their mother is dead and their father died while fighting for the King. Now Cromwell’s soldiers have come to burn the house - with the children in it.

England and Scotland in the 1500s. Two famous queens: Mary, the Catholic Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I, the Protestant Queen of England. It was an exciting and a dangerous time to be alive - and to be a queen. Mary was Queen of Scotland when she was one week old. At 16, she was also Queen of France. She was tall and beautiful, with red-gold hair. Many men loved her and died for her. But she also had many enemies - men who said: "The death of Mary is the life of Elizabeth."

Adapted from the classic by Lewis Carroll.... There, on top of the mushroom, was a large caterpillar, smoking a pipe. After a while the Caterpillar took the pipe out of its mouth and said to Alice in a slow, sleepy voice, "Who are you?" What strange things happen when Alice falls down the rabbit-hole and into Wonderland! She has conversations with the Caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat, goes to the Mad Hatter’s tea party, and plays croquet with the King and Queen of Hearts.

Tom Sawyer does not like school. He does not like work, and he never wants to get out of bed in the morning. But he likes swimming and fishing, and having adventures with his friends. And he has a lot of adventures. One night, he and his friend Huck Finn go to the graveyard to look for ghosts.They don’t see any ghosts that night. They see something worse than a ghost – much, much worse.

In the jungle of Southern India the Seeonee Wolf-Pack has a new cub. He is not a wolf - he is Mowgli, a human child, but he knows nothing of the world of men. He lives and hunts with his brothers the wolves. Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther are his friends and teachers. And Shere Khan, the man-eating tiger, is his enemy.Kipling’s famous story of Mowgli’s adventures in the jungle has been loved by young and old for more than a hundred years.

Little Mary Lennox is a bad-tempered, disagreeable child. When her parents die in India, she is sent back to England to live with her uncle in a big, lonely, old house. There is nothing to do all day except walk in the gardens – and watch the robin flying over the high walls of the secret garden . . . which has been locked for ten years. And no one has the key. An Oxford Bookworms Library reader for learners of English, adapted from the Frances Hodgson Burnett original by Clare West.

All he wanted to do was to marry the woman he loved. But his country said ’No!’ He was Edward VIII, King of Great Britain, King of India, King of Australia, and king of 39 other countries. And he loved the wrong woman. She was beautiful and she loved him - but she was already married to another man. It was a love story that shook the world. The king had to choose: to be king, or to have love... and leave his country, never to return.

Adapted from the novel by L. Frank Baum.... Dorothy lives in Kansas, but one day a cyclone blows her and her house to a strange country called Oz. There, Dorothy makes friends with the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. But she wants to go home to Kansas. Only one person can help her, and that is the country’s famous Wizard of Oz. So Dorothy and her friends follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City to find the Wizard.

Marilla Cuthbert and her brother Matthew want to adopt an orphan, to help on the farm at Green Gables. They ask for a boy, but they get Anne, who has red hair and freckles, and who talks and talks and talks.They didn’t want a girl, but how can they send a child back, like an unwanted parcel? So Anne stays, and begins a new life in the sleepy, quiet village of Avonlea in Canada.

When the children dug a hole in the gravel-pit, they were very surprised at what they found. "It" was a Psammead, a sand-fairy, thousands of years old. It was a strange little thing - fat and furry, and with eyes on long stalks. It was often very cross and unfriendly, but it could give wishes - one wish a day. "How wonderful!" the children said. But wishes are difficult things. They can get you into trouble. An Oxford Bookworms Library reader for learners of English.