Matilda, a brilliant, sensitive little girl, uses her talents and ingenuity to seek revenge on her crooked father, lazy mother, and the terrifying Miss Trunchbull, her wicked headmistress, and save her beloved teacher, Miss Honey.

"A swashbuckling epic of chivalry, honor, and derring-do, it is set in France during the 1620s and richly populated with romantic heroes, unattainable heroines, kings, queens, cavaliers, and criminals in a whirl of adventure, espionage, conspiracy, murder, vengeance, love, scandal, and suspense. Dumas transforms major and minor historical figures into larger-than-life characters: the brave d'Artagnan, an impetuous young man in pursuit of glory; the...

"Jules Verne's pioneering classic tells the story of the distinguished but eccentric Professor Lidenbrock, who finds a scrap of parchment in an old manuscript. A cipher, written in runes, tells of an entrance to another world - a world hidden beneath our own. So with his nephew reluctantly in tow, the Professor follows this cryptic clue down into a dormant volcano, and the further they descend, the more extraordinary the discoveries and creatures...

For generations, children around the world have come of age with Louisa May Alcott's March girls: hardworking eldest sister Meg, headstrong, impulsive Jo, timid Beth, and precocious Amy. With their father away at war, and their loving mother Marmee working to support the family, the four sisters have to rely on one another for support as they endure the hardships of wartime and poverty. We witness the sisters growing up and figuring out what role...

Great Expectations is Charles Dickens's thirteenth novel. It is his second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. Great Expectations is a bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age novel, and it is a classic work of Victorian literature. It depicts the growth and personal development of an orphan named Pip. The novel was first published in serial form in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860...

"Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory is opening at last! But only five lucky children will be allowed inside. And the winners are: Augustus Gloop, an enormously fat boy whose hobby is eating; Veruca Salt, a spoiled-rotten brat whose parents are wrapped around her little finger; Violet Beauregarde, a dim-witted gum-chewer with the fastest jaws around; Mike Teavee, a toy pistol-toting gangster-in-training who is obsessed with television; and Charlie...

"Ten years after the school at Plumfield was founded, Jo's boys--including wanderer Dan, sailor Emil and musician Nat--are grown up and discovering more about the world. But life after childhood can be confusing and frightening, and it is Jo and the warm-hearted March family who can comfort and guide the boys when they need it most."--Back cover.

Called "the veriest trash" by a member of the Concord, Massachusetts Library Board that banned the novel when it was first published, Huckleberry Finn has come to be viewed, as H.L. Mencken put it, as "one of the great masterpieces of the world." Ernest Hemingway wrote that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn....There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." A daringly ironic...

"Mark Twain's classic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has been enjoyed by generations of readers across the world since its publication in 1876. With its humorous glimpses into life in nineteenth-century, small-town America, this novel has provided unique social commentary that continues to be discussed in classrooms today. Tom Sawyer, a mischievous boy growing up in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, is constantly getting in and out of...

One ill-fated evening at the Reform Club, Phileas Fogg rashly bets his companions that he can travel around the entire globe in just eighty days -- and he is determined not to lose. Breaking the well-established routine of his daily life, the reserved Englishman immediately sets off for Dover, accompaned by his hot-blooded manservant Passepartout. Traveling by train, steamship, sailboat, sledge, and even elephant, they must overcome storms, kidnappings,...