Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

"On an autumn day, in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, two boys were born in England, one to a poor family by the name of Canty who lived in Offal Court, not far from London Bridge, and the other to a wealthy and high-placed family by the name of Tudor. Young Tom Canty, unwanted, unloved, began his day-dreaming early in order to forget the petty stealing to which he was forced by his cruel rogue of a father--and the royal Court and young...

The story of Oliver Twist - orphaned, and set upon by evil and adversity from his first breath - shocked readers when it was published. After running away from the workhouse and pompous beadle Mr Bumble, Oliver finds himself lured into a den of thieves peopled by vivid and memorable characters - the Artful Dodger, vicious burglar Bill Sikes, his dog Bull's Eye, and prostitute Nancy, all watched over by cunning master-thief Fagin. Combining elements...

They are the same age and they look alike. Tom Canty is a child of the London slums; Edward Tudor is heir to the throne of England. Just how insubstantial this difference is becomes all too clear when a chance encounter leads to an exchange of clothing and roles.

Mansfield Park is a study of three families - the Bertrams, the Crawfords, and the Prices - with the isolated figure of the heroine, Fanny price, at its centre. Fanny's quiet passivity, her steadfast loyalty, and love for the son of the family who regard her as the poor relation, and who have taken her under their roof, are among the qualities whose true worth is not appreciated until they are tried against the brilliant and witty Mary and Henry Crawford,...

Called "the veriest trash" by a member of the Concord, Massachusetts Library Board that banned the novel when it was first published, Huckleberry Finn has come to be viewed, as H.L. Mencken put it, as "one of the great masterpieces of the world." Ernest Hemingway wrote that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn....There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." A daringly ironic...

The adventures of an eleven-year-old tomboy growing up on the Wisconsin frontier in the mid-nineteenth century. At age 11, Caddie Woodlawn is the despair of her mother and the pride of her father: a clock-fixing tomboy running wild in the woods of Wisconsin. In 1864, this is a bit much for her Boston-bred mother to bear, but Caddie and her brothers are happy with the status quo. Written in 1935 about Carol Ryrie Brink's grandmother's childhood, the...

Includes: A Christmas Carol, in Prose; The Chimes and the Cricket on the Hearth

A miser learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and foretell his future.

On Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by three ghosts who try to convince him to change his life.

With energy wars flaring across the globe, oil prices gone crazy, regular power cuts, and soldiers keeping the Outsiders in check, Hunter, one of the privileged of society, is fascinated by the Outsiders, so when he meets Uma he is quickly drawn into her circle of the poor and disenfranchised.