The adventures of the well-to-do hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, who lived happily in his comfortable home until a wandering wizard granted his wish. A new edition to Tolkien's classic, the prelude to the Lord of the Rings saga, is available just in time for "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, " set for release in theaters in December 2002. Illustrations. In this fantasy, a prelude to The Lord of the Rings, the reader meets Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, in...

A collection of the well-known stories including "The Butterfly that Stamped," "How the Whale Got his Throat, " and "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo."

Penned by English Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling in 1894, The Jungle Book is a collection of allegorical stories that take place deep in the Indian jungle. The most famous stories of The Jungle Book are those featuring a young feral boy named Mowgli who was raised by wolves, is friends with a panther, and was educated by the animals of the jungle. "Set in the mystical depths of the Indian jungle, where tigers roam the land and monkeys swing from...

"Commemorating the 150th anniversary of one of the most beloved classics of children's literature, this illustrated edition presents Alice like you've never seen her before. In 1865, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an Oxford mathematician and Anglican deacon, published a story about a little girl who tumbles down a rabbit hole. Thus was the world first introduced to Alice and her pseudonymous creator, Lewis Carroll. This beautiful new edition of Alice's...

"Composed around 730 B.C., Homer's Iliad recounts the events of a few momentous weeks in the protracted ten-year war between the invading Achaeans, or Greeks, and the Trojans in their besieged city of Ilion. From the explosive confrontation between Achilles, the greatest warrior at Troy, and Agamemnon, the inept leader of the Greeks, through to its tragic conclusion, The Iliad explores the abiding, blighting facts of war. Carved close to the original...

An idle man falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains only to wake up twenty years later, bewildered as to how life passed him by. Includes an analysis of the story and a biography of the author.

One of the most popular pieces of American fiction is Washington Irving s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, originally published in 1820 in Irving s short story collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Set in New York s Hudson River valley after the American Revolution, it is rich with Dutch culture, regional history, and ghost stories. In schoolmaster Ichabod Crane and his adversary the Headless Horseman, Irving created two of the most unforgettable...

Kidsnatched from her orphanage by a BFG (Big Friendly Giant), who spends his life blowing happy dreams to children, Sophie concocts with him a plan to save the world from nine other man-gobbling cannybull giants.

An ugly duckling spends an unhappy year ostracized by the other animals in the barnyard before he grows into a beautiful swan.

Patroclus, an awkward young prince, follows Achilles into war, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they have learned, everything they hold dear. And that, before he is ready, he will be forced to surrender his friend to the hands of Fate. Set during the Trojan War.