While playing in a gravel pit, five siblings-Robert, Anthea, Cyril, Jane and baby Lamb-unearth Psammead, a sand-fairy who has the ability to grant wishes. Unfortunately, the Psammead has been buried so long that his magic has grown rusty, and the children's wishes go humorously awry. When the children wish to be beautiful, their servants think them strangers and throw them out onto the street. When they wish for jewelry for their mother, all the jewelry...

The People of the Mist, an intoxicating mix of adventure, fantasy, and romance, is an underappreciated classic of English literature. Lesser-known among Rider's works, this novel is perhaps more famous for being the origin of the phrase "Per Ardua ad Astra"-through hardship to the stars-than it is as a story that endures over a century after its publication. Shaken by the loss of his fortune, abandoned by the woman he was to marry, Leonard Outram...

Now that Ramona is eight years old, she's doing all kinds of things she's never done before. She's in a new school with a new teacher, and best of all, she takes the school bus-all by herself! But since her mother works and her daddy's in art school, Ramona has to stay with old Mrs. Kemp every day until Beezus comes for her. And as if all that isn't bad enough, she has to be nice to four-year-old Wila Jean. Ramona knows the family is depending on...

"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." With this celebrated sentence, Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world. By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper seeks to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths...

Faced with a dull summer in the city, Jane, Mark, Katharine, and Martha suddenly find themselves involved in a series of extraordinary adventures after Jane discovers an ordinary-looking coin that seems to grant wishes.

Six-year-old Ramona tries to cope with an unsympathetic first-grade teacher. In this touching and funny story, the ebullient Ramona, feeling brave and grown-up, enters first grade. Quickly she finds that her new teacher, Mrs. Griggs, appears perplexed by pupils who like to be different. Since Ramona cannot help being different, clearly the two are incompatible. Nevertheless, Ramona can be counted on to keep things lively. Enraged when Susan copies...

"Big sister Beezus Quimby tries to be patient with her four-year-old little sister, Ramona, but it isn't easy, not when Ramona powders her nose with marshmallows and invites her nursery school class to a party without telling her family. Sometimes Beezus doesn't like Ramona, but the girls are sisters and that means they will always love each other - just not every single minute." - from back cover.

Ramona's year in third grade is highlighted by the arrival of Howie's rich Uncle Hobart, a change in her after-school situation, a surprise wedding, a death and a new arrival in the family, and her father's getting a job.

It all starts when Mary Poppins is blown by the east wind onto the doorstep of the Banks house. She becomes a most unusual nanny to Jane, Michael, and the twins. Who else but Mary Poppins can slide up banisters, pull an entire armchair out of an empty carpetbag, and make a dose of medicine taste like delicious lime-juice cordial? A day with Mary Poppins is a day of magic and make-believe come to life!

Times are tough around the little brown house! The widowed Mrs. Pepper has to sew all day long just to earn enough to pay the rent and to feed the five growing Peppers. But she faces poverty and trouble with a stout heart, a smiling face, and the help of her jolly brood: blue-eyed Ben, the eldest and the man of the house at the age of 11; pretty Polly, so eager to cook for the family and make everyone happy and comfortable; and the three littlest...