Sixteen-year-old Leslie has come to the New Jersey shore as a companion to her ailing Aunt Marcia, whose doctor has sent her there for some quiet rest and recuperation. While the beach is lovely in October, Leslie quickly finds herself getting lonely with no one her own age to talk to. But one day, her dog digs up a metal box with an engraved dragon on it. This will lead Leslie not only to a mystery but also to a new friend. -

The appointment of a new bishop and the ensuing conflicts and intrigue form the basis of this satire of the clergy.

A retelling of the medieval poem about a group of travelers on a pilgrimage to Canterbury and the tales they tell each other. With their astonishing diversity of tone and subject matter, The Canterbury Tales have become one of the touchstones of medieval literature. Translated here into modern English, these tales of a motley crowd of pilgrims drawn from all walks of life-from knight to nun, miller to monk-reveal a picture of English life in the fourteenth...

The autobiography of Booker T. Washington, a remarkable orator and former slave who pressed for equality and black community. "Born in a Virginia slave hut, Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) rose to become the most influential spokesman for African Americans of his day. In this eloquently written book, he describes events in a remarkable life that began in bondage and culminated in worldwide recognition for his many accomplishments. In simply written...

Blackstone Audio is proud to present the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production of Measure for Measure, Shakespeare's compelling tragicomedy that explores restraint—and lack thereof.

Who legislates morality?

The duke's authoritarian deputy, Angelo, is hell-bent on stamping out moral decay. He reactivates outdated draconian laws and aims his arrogant crosshairs at a young man whose fiancée is pregnant, sentencing him to death. Angelo

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'There remains the greatest of all novelists-for what else can we call the author of War And Peace? [Tolstoy's] senses, his intellect, are acute, powerful, and well nourished...Nothing seems to escape him. Nothing glances off him unrecorded...Every twig, every feather sticks to his magnet. He notices the blue or red of a child's frock; the way a horse shifts its tail; the sound of a cough; the action of a man trying to put his hands into pockets that...

While Hank Morgan, Twain's time-displaced Yankee traveller, keeps up a steady stream of flippancies, founding the first tabloid, the Camelot Weekly Hosannah and Literary Volcano, and organizing a game of baseball between armour-clad knights, he also keeps up a steady commentary on the social mores of King Arthur's court, criticizing the hereditary social classes and state church still strong in the Victorian England of Twain's own day, and championing...

Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound, but you couldn't fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it; especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer. Late in the afternoon the sun slanted down into the mossy yard belonging to Francie Nolan's house,...

The Puritans thought Hester Prynne's crime was unforgiveable. She was convicted, imprisoned -- and then forced to wear, forever, a public reminder of her sin. The Scarlet Letter. The Letter was unending punishment: it set Hester apart from society, it tormented her days and haunted her soul. But the Letter haunted others, as well. Its mystery turned Roger Chillingworth from a gentle healer into a man driven by revenge. Its meaning burned into Rev....

Spellbound before his own portrait, Dorian Gray utters a fateful wish. In exchange for eternal youth he gives his soul, to be corrupted by the malign influence of his mentor, the aesthete and hedonist Lord Henry Wotton. The novel was met with moral outrage by contemporary critics who, dazzled perhaps by Wilde's brilliant style, may have confused the author with his creation, Lord Henry, to whom even Dorian protests, 'You cut life to pieces with your...