Synopsis: The Winter’s Tale, one of Shakespeare’s very late plays, is filled with improbabilities. Before the conclusion, one character comments that what we are about to see, “Were it but told you, should be hooted at / Like an old tale.”

It includes murderous passions, man-eating bears, princes and princesses in disguise, death by drowning and by grief, oracles, betrayal, and unexpected joy. Yet the play, which draws much of its power from Greek myth, is grounded in the everyday.

A “winter’s tale” is one told or read on a long winter’s night. Paradoxically, this winter’s tale is ideally seen rather than read—though the imagination can transform words into vivid action. Its shift from tragedy to comedy, disguises, and startling exits and transformations seem addressed to theater audiences.

The authoritative edition of The Winter’s Tale from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:

-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
-Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
-Scene-by-scene plot summaries
-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases
-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language
-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books
-An annotated guide to further reading

Essay by Stephen Orgel

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.

Synopsis: 'The most perfect of all the Dickens novels' Virginia Woolf

David Copperfield is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters he encounters are his tyrannical stepfather, Mr Murdstone; his brilliant, but ultimately unworthy school-friend James Steerforth; his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood; the eternally humble, yet treacherous Uriah Heep; frivolous, enchanting Dora Spenlow; and the magnificently impecunious Wilkins Micawber, one of literature's great comic creations. In David Copperfield - the novel he described as his 'favourite child' - Dickens drew revealingly on his own experiences to create one of the most exuberant and enduringly popular works, filled with tragedy and comedy in equal measure. This edition uses the text of the first volume publication of 1850, and includes updated suggestions for further reading, original illustrations by 'Phiz', a revised chronology and expanded notes. In his new introduction, Jeremy Tambling discusses the novel's autobiographical elements, and its central themes of memory and identity. 

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Synopsis: The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, honored the best of science fiction's early short stories. This volume is the definitive collection of the best science fiction novellas written between 1929 to 1964 and contains eleven great classics. There is no better anthology that captures the birth of science fiction as a literary field.

Published in 1973 to honor novellas that had come before the institution of the Nebula Awards, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame introduced tens of thousands of young readers to the wonders of science fiction and was a favorite of libraries across the country.

This volume contains the following:

Introduction by Ben Bova
"Call Me Joe" by Poul Anderson
"Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr.
"Nerves" by Lester del Rey
"Universe" by Robert A. Heinlein
"The Marching Morons" by C. M. Kornbluth
"Vintage Season" by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
". . . And Then There Were None" by Eric Frank Russell
"The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" by Cordwainer Smith
"Baby Is Three" by Theodore Sturgeon
"The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells
"With Folded Hands" by Jack Williamson

Synopsis: A thrilling novel of a young boy's devastation when his father uproots him and moves their family to Russia, where a society of Finnish-Socialists attempt to found a workers' paradise.

Jake's life is turned upside down when his father gets caught up in the Socialist fervor washing over their Finnish mining community in Minnesota. His father decides to move their family to a new, Finnish state inside the Soviet Union, a change that fills Jake with dread. Where his father dreams of creating a worker's paradise, Jake and his family find disappointment and hardship. The story culminates with a thrilling escape--on skis--from Russia to Finland.

Synopsis: One year ago, a devastating plague called Strain 7 killed three quarters of the human race. Around the world, power systems failed and supply chains screeched to a halt. The surviving population of the United States has been relocated to the coasts; the heartland is now a wasteland called The Big Empty. But seven teens trying to put their lives back together will learn that the abandoned zone holds danger, secrets, and above all, hope.

Synopsis: Having your deepest wish granted isn't easy!
First the bad news: Ten-year-old Will Parrish knows that he's in for a bummer of a summer -- his parents can't join him and his little sister Maddy on their annual visit to Grandma's at the beach, Grandma has a broken ankle, and Jerome, Will's incorrigible cousin, is spoiling for trouble -- for which Will is often blamed. The good news: Will is staying in his mother's old room, which is filled with her childhood books. Leafing through The Arabian Nights, Will inadvertently releases a kindly genie who insists upon granting Will's deepest wish. But -- what is Will's greatest wish?
A delightfully freewheeling fantasy, Will's adventures are inspired by such well-known and well-loved classics as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Treasure Island, and the books of Edward Eager. In Cindy Trumbore's appealing first novel, young readers, along with Will, Maddy, and Jerome, have a summer as exciting as any they have ever read about!