This holiday, we proudly present to you this unique collection of the greatest Christmas stories. Over 250 of them are included by your favourite authors:Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Willa Cather, Beatrix Potter, Louisa May Alcott, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Hans Christian Andersen, E.T.A. Hoffmann, O. Henry, Mark Twain and many more!

What happens when freedom of expression comes under threat? In frank and wide-ranging interviews, historian and critic Leonard S. Marcus probes the experience of thirteen leading authors of books for young people.A powerful photo essay on transgender teens is called anti-religious and anti-family. A meticulously researched primer on sex education stirs up accusations of pornography and child abuse. Picture books about two mommies (or two penguin daddies) set off a ...

Since the first edition more than 10 years ago many new information material about tropical diseases have been collected. New technologies were established (e.g. hybridization techniques, flow cytometry, image analysis, telepathology, serologic analysis etc.). The continuous and rapid improvement of tourism in all countries of the world and the increasing emigration of peoples of the developing countries to the old continents have changed the classical image of tropical diseases which are ...

Elizabeth II is the longest-reigning British monarch. A personally quiet, modest and dutiful person, she is far better-informed about the lives of her subjects than they often realize. She has known every Prime Minister since Winston Churchill and every American President since Eisenhower. Yet what of the woman behind the crown?This book seeks to take a new look at this exhaustively-documented life and show how Queen Elizabeth became the person she is. Who, and what, have been the ...

From two-time Newbery award-winning author Katherine Paterson.When Lyddie and her younger brother are hired out as servants to help pay off their family farm's debts, Lyddie is determined to find a way to reunite her family once again. Hearing about all the money a girl can make working in the textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, she makes her way there, only to find that her dreams of returning home may never come true.Includes an all-new common...

A history of the development and role during World War II of the private army of the Nazi Luftwaffe's commander-in-chief.In the early years of the Third Reich, Hermann Göring, one of the most notorious leaders of the Third Reich, worked to establish his own personal army to rival Himmler's SS and Reichswehr. The result: a private Prussian police force which grew into one of the most powerful armored units in Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht.This unit fought throughou...

Otto Kretschmer was only in combat from September 1939 until March 1941 but was Germany's highest-scoring U-boat commander sinking 47 ships totaling 274,333 tons. This definitive work details his personal story and the political backdrop from his earliest days. Aged 17 he spent 8 months studying literature at Exeter University where he learned to speak English fluently. The following year, on 1 April 1930, he enlisted as an officer candidate in the Weimar Republic's small navy.Afte...

In an engrossing historical novel, the Newbery Medal-winning author of Bridge to Terabithia follows a young Cuban teenager as she volunteers for Fidel Castro’s national literacy campaign and travels into the impoverished countryside to teach others how to read.When thirteen-year-old Lora tells her parents that she wants to join Premier Castro’s army of young literacy teachers, her mother screeches to high heaven, and her father roars like a lion. Nora has ...

The character of the last Tsar, Nicholas II (1868-1918) is crucial to understanding the overthrow of tsarist Russia, the most significant event in Russian history. Nicholas became Tsar at the age of 26. Though a conscientious man who was passionate in his devotion to his country, he was weak, sentimental, dogmatic and indecisive. Ironically he could have made an effective constitutional monarch, but these flaws rendered him fatally unsuited to be the sole ruler of a nation that was in the ...

Set in London and Brighton, Thirty Days is a fabulously provocative romance series that gives you a very steamy love affair between a hot guy and an unsure heroine, baked goods and some rather unexpected twists and turns along the way."So," Taylor murmurs into my ear. "What do you do when all your dreams come true?"Over the last nine months Abby and Taylor have been to hell and back. Just when it seems like things are finally comin...

A history of the latter portion of WWI's deadly Battle of the Somme, featuring a guide for walking and driving around the historic sites.Much of the popular attention on the Battle of the Somme 1916 is focussed on the first day of the infantry assault, 1st July, when such high hopes were dashed and British casualties ran into the tens of thousands. However, the Somme was a battle that lasted over twenty weeks, running well into the autumn.This book is concern...

Nearing the second anniversary of her daughter's murder, Peta Collins flees the media scrum by renting a cottage in the Hunter Valley.Unknown to her, the cottage is owned by Daniel Woodman, the retired detective formerly in charge of her daughter's murder investigation.Peta has come here seeking to forget and the cottage is the perfect place with its reputation for healing. But she finds herself increasingly drawn to Daniel.How can they have a future when he reminds...