Kimballs Green Junior School’s newest student is more than a little strange—in fact, she might be the feared daughter of the Erl King! Kevin loves sharing the stories his grandmother used to tell him about trolls and witches with his school friends. His favorite tale is about a scary spook named the Erl King who rides on a black horse at night. But when a new student, Nora Scull, arrives at Kimballs Green elementary school, Kevin begins to wonder if maybe the stories are true. Skinny as a broom and with dark, stringy hair, Nora never laughs, but she’s always watching and listening. She also steals and makes Kevin do all sorts of bad things. Who is Nora, and what will Kevin have to do to save himself—and his school? This ebook features illustrations by Paul Warren and a personal history of Joan Aiken including rare images from the author’s estate.

From “one of the greatest writers of this century,” a fantasy masterpiece about the aftermath of a marriage between a mortal prince and an elfin princess. —Arthur C. Clarke Before the fellowships and wardrobes and dire wolves . . . . . . there was the village of Erl and the Kingdom of Elfland. Considered formative to the development of the fairy tale and high fantasy subgenres, The King of Elfland's Daughter follows Alveric, who leaves home on a quest with a few basic instructions: locate the Princess Lirazel in Elfland, convince her to return to Erl and marry him, and together produce the first magical Lord of Erl. But what happens when a village gets exactly what it asked for? How does an elf learn to live as a human? Is love lost once, lost forever? The people of Erl are about to find out. Take a walk through the fields we know and see if you can spot the pale-blue peaks of the Elfland Mountains. Fans of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Neil Gaiman will adore Lord Dunsany’s influential 1924 classic as much as those authors themselves did. “No amount of mere description can convey more than a fraction of Lord Dunsany's pervasive charm.” —H. P. Lovecraft “We find that he has but tranfigured with beauty the common sights of the world.” —William Butler Yeats “No one can understand modern fantasy without understanding its roots, and Lord Dunsany's work is immediately significant as well as enjoyable even today.” —Katharine Kerr “A fantasy novel in a class with the Tolkien books.”—L. Sprague de Camp

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HELEN SIMPSON From familiar fairy tales and legends âe" Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, vampires and werewolves âe" Angela Carter has created an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories.

Is King Lear an autonomous text, or a rewrite of the earlier and anonymous play King Leir? Should we refer to Shakespeare’s original quarto when discussing the play, the revised folio text, or the popular composite version, stitched together by Alexander Pope in 1725? What of its stage variations? When turning from page to stage, the critical view on King Lear is skewed by the fact that for almost half of the four hundred years the play has been performed, audiences preferred Naham Tate's optimistic adaptation, in which Lear and Cordelia live happily ever after. When discussing King Lear, the question of what comprises ‘the play’ is both complex and fragmentary. These issues of identity and authenticity across time and across mediums are outlined, debated, and considered critically by the contributors to this volume. Using a variety of approaches, from postcolonialism and New Historicism to psychoanalysis and gender studies, the leading international contributors to King Lear: New Critical Essays offer major new interpretations on the conception and writing, editing, and cultural productions of King Lear. This book is an up-to-date and comprehensive anthology of textual scholarship, performance research, and critical writing on one of Shakespeare's most important and perplexing tragedies. Contributors Include: R.A. Foakes, Richard Knowles, Tom Clayton, Cynthia Clegg, Edward L. Rocklin, Christy Desmet, Paul Cantor, Robert V. Young, Stanley Stewart and Jean R. Brink

In 1659, fourteen-year-old Mary Newbury keeps a journal of her voyage from England to the New World and her experiences living as a witch in a community of Puritans near Salem, Massachusetts.