This book tells the story of the Vikings--their ships and weapons, heroes and myths, and great adventures in war and exploration. "Become an eyewitness to the world of Nordic raiders and traders and learn all about the culture and history of Vikings. This picture-led guide will take you on a visual tour of the history and culture of these daring Norse adventurers. Children can learn all about the Vikings' incredible ships and conquests, as well as...

The story of Wang Lung, the family he founded, the gods he implored, and, above all, the earth that sustained him, the land that he made to prosper against the ravages of nature and the savage attacks of bandit tribes.

"A timeless classic, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey is both a coming-of-age story and a parody of the Gothic novels of the nineteenth century. Catherine Morland is destined to be the heroine of her own life story as she navigates friendships and romantic relationships, and as she learns to let go of childish notions of fantasy regarding the lives of others. Held from publication for more than a decade, this story was an instant success when it was...

"Step into the world of ancient Rome and meet its emperors, gods, soldiers, and gladiators. Who were Rome's most famous emperors? What was everyday life like for a soldier in the Roman army? How did the citizens of ancient Rome live? Did gladiators really fight to the death in the mighty Colosseum? Find out the answers to all these questions, and many more, in Eyewitness Ancient Rome. Photographs of real artefacts and detailed illustrations will help...

This updated authoritative edition of the classic Hardy novel, which was published anonymously and first attributed to George Eliot, is set from Hardy's revised, unedited final draft of 1912 and features a new Introduction and Afterword. There is in England no more real or typical district than Thomas Hardy's imaginary Wessex, the scattered fields and farms of which were first discovered in Far from the Madding Crowd. It is here that Gabriel Oak observes...

Looks behind fortress walls to explore how they were built to house hundreds of people and animals, the important rooms, the people who lived in them, and what castle life was like.

Having engineered the marriage of the governess, Emma now turns her attention towards making a match for Mr. Elton, the local vicar. Emma's one voice of reason and restraint is Mr. Knightley who has known her since she was a child and who watches her behavior with wry amusement and sometimes with real anger. Emma presides over the small provincial world of Highbury with enthusiasm but she will find that it is all too easy to confuse good intentions...

Persuasion by Jane Austen. What does persuasion mean - a firm belief, or the action of persuading someone to think something else? Anne Elliot is one of Austen's quietest heroines, but also one of the strongest and the most open to change. She lives at the time of the Napoleonic wars, a time of accident, adventure, the making of new fortunes and alliances. A woman of no importance, she maneuvers in her restricted circumstances as her long-time love...

A true-life novel about Lily Casey Smith (the author's grandmother) who at age six helped her father break horses, at age fifteen left home to teach in a frontier town, and later as a wife and mother runs a vast ranch in Arizona where she survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy--but despite a life of hardscrabble drudgery still remains a woman of indomitable spirit.