Featured Ebooks
Winter Stories Header
It's Winter Intersession, so here are some ebooks about winter and the holidays. We've got fairy tales, nonfiction about snow, juvenile fiction inspired by King Arthur, and classics with cold-hearted characters.
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Winter Ebooks Gallery
Snow
Snow has had an astonishing influence on the shape of the land and human history. Ruth Kirk writes perceptively of how animals and people survive in the snow; of glaciers, continental ice sheets, blizzards, and avalanches; and of the awesome hazards of Arctic and Antarctic exploration.
Seven Spools of Thread
In an African village live seven brothers who make family life miserable with their constant fighting. When their father dies, he leaves an unusual will: by sundown, the brothers must make gold out of seven spools of thread. If they fail, they will be turned out as beggars. Using the Nguzo Saba, or "seven principles" of Kwanzaa, the author has created an unforgettable story that shows how family members can pull together, for their own good and the good of the entire community. Magnificent and inspiring linoleum block prints by Daniel Minter bring joy to this Kwanzaa celebration.
The Velveteen Rabbit
A timeless classic about the magic of boundless love that's been treasured for generations! At first a brand-new toy, now a threadbare and discarded nursery relic, the velveteen rabbit is saved from peril by a magic fairy who whisks him away to the idyllic world of Rabbitland.There, he becomes "Real," a cherished childhood companion who will be loved for eternity.
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me
A collection of all-new fairytales by some of the biggest names in fiction including stories by Neil Gaiman, Aimee Bender and Neil Labute. Inspired by everything from Hans Christian Andersen's 'The Snow Queen' and 'The Little Match Girl' to Charles Perrault's 'Bluebeard' and 'Cinderella' to the Brothers Grimm's 'Hansel and Gretel' and 'Rumpelstiltskin' to fairytales by Goethe and Calvino and from China, Japan, Vietnam, Russia, Norway and Mexico, here are stories that soar into boundless realms, filled with mischief, mystery and magic.
The Hanukkah Anthology
The Hanukkah Anthology delves into the stories and messages of Hanukkah as they have unfolded in Jewish literature over the past two thousand years: biblical intimations of the festival, postbiblical writings, selections from the Talmud and midrashim, excerpts from medieval books, home liturgies, laws and customs, observances in different nations, stories and poems, art, and recipes. This timeless volume features many works by prominent authors, including Herman Wouk, Judah L. Magnes, Chaim Potok, Heinrich Heine, Emma Lazarus, Howard Fast, Sholom Aleichem, Curt Leviant, I. L. Peretz, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Wuthering Heights
Mr. Earnshaw, the owner of the Wuthering Heights manor, adopts a young orphan named Heathcliff to raise alongside his two children, Hindley and Catherine. Though Hindley hates him, Heathcliff forms a close relationship with Catherine. As an adult, Catherine marries Edgar, a wealthy neighbor who detests Heathcliff, and Heathcliff flees. Spurred on by feelings of abandonment and betrayal as well as the loss of his beloved, Healthcliff seeks revenge on everyone who wronged him. This unabridged version of Emily Brontë's classic English Gothic novel is taken from the 1910 copyright edition.
The Winter Hare
Young Will Belet is sent from his noble family to serve as a page in the household of the earl of Oxford, where he must confront treachery within the castle as well as danger outside its walls.
Anna Karenina
A famous legend surrounding the creation of "Anna Karenina" tells us that Tolstoy began writing a cautionary tale about adultery and ended up falling in love with his magnificent heroine. It is rare to find a reader of the book who doesn't experience the same kind of emotional upheaval. Anna Karenina is filled with major and minor characters who exist in their own right and fully embody their mid-nineteenth-century Russian milieu, but it still belongs entirely to the woman whose name it bears, whose portrait is one of the truest ever made by a writer. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude
After Frost
Robert Frost has long dominated the public's image of New England poetry, but who are the poets who follow him in time and how have they expressed their visions of the landscape, the individual, and the community? This volume brings together the work of thirty distinguished poets to convey the vitality and variety of the region's poetic creation during much of the twentieth century.
White Fang
White Fang is a novel initially published in 1906, written by author Jack London. The story takes place during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush and details the compelling journey of a wild wolfdog named White Fang from to domestication, with his thre owners. Much of White Fang is written from the viewpoint of the canine character, enabling London to express how animals may view their world and humans. White Fang examines the violent world of wild animals and the equally violent world of humans. The book also explores complex themes including morality and redemption.
Great Expectations
One of Dicken's finest novels, Great Expectations chronicles the fortunes of its young protagonist Pip as he is unexpectedly endowed by a mysterious benefactor with the life of a genteman, enabling him to escape to London from the prospect of a humble blacksmith's career in ruarl Kent. In the butsling, unforgiving capital he must learn for himslef the pitfalls of love and wealth, and how to sort his friends from his enemies. Through the lives of its unforgettable and iconic characters - such as Magwitch, Miss Havisham and Estella - Great Expectations charts the course of an England undergoing rapid social and economic change, and tells a tale that is among the foremost classics of the English language.
Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates
Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates is a novel by American author Mary Mapes Dodge, first published in 1865. The novel takes place in the Netherlands and is a colorful fictional portrait of early 19th-century Dutch life, as well as a tale of youthful honor.
The book's title refers to the beautiful silver skates to be awarded to the winner of the ice-skating race Hans Brinker hopes to enter. The novel introduced the sport of Dutch speed skating to Americans, and in U.S. media Hans Brinker is still considered the prototypical speed skater.
The Winter's Tale
The Winter's Tale, one of Shakespeare's very late plays, is filled with improbabilities. 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.
The Poetry of Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born in 1830 in Amherst Massachusetts. Rightly regarded as a major American poet, her life was sheltered, introverted, and reclusive. Despite writing over 1800 poems, only a dozen or so were published during her lifetime. Her structures and wordings are at times difficult to get to grips with, though recurring themes of religion and death certainly shadow many of her works. At her death is 1886, it is likely her work might have been lost had it not been for a publication by her sister. Indeed it was only in the 1950s that a complete and unedited collection of her works was published. In the ensuing half century she has gradually climbed into the pantheon of Greats
Beowulf
Beowulf is the longest and finest literary work to have come down to us from Anglo-Saxon times, and one of the world's greatest epic poems. Set in the half-legendary, half historical Scandinavian past, it tells the story of the hero Beowulf, who comes to the aid of the Danish king Hrothgar bykilling first the terrifying, demonic monster Grendel, and then Grendel's infuriated and vengeful mother. .The poem celebrates the virtues of the heroic life, but Hrothgar and Beowulf are beacons of wisdom and courage in a dark world of feuds, violence and uncertainty, and Beowulf's selfless heroism is set against a background of ruthless power struggles, fratricide and tyranny.
Picabo
Picabo Street is the great American champion skier of this generation, having won the silver medal at the Lillehammer Winter Olympics in '94, the World Championship and World Cup titles in '95 and '96, and the Olympic Gold in Nagano, Japan in '98. Three years after a horrific crash that shattered her leg in four places and made headlines around the world, she's coming back for the Salt Lake City Olympics. This is her story.
A Doll's House
It's Christmastime in Norway, and Norma Helmer is preparing her lovely home for the holidays. A dainty, jovial woman, Norma is adored by her husband, Torvald, and their three children. But when an old friend comes to visit, Norma reveals that her life is not as carefree as it seems. Norma is keeping a secret from Torvald, a secret that would shatter his illusion of her as the perfect wife. But is she prepared to maintain that illusion for the rest of her life? This unabridged edition of Henrik Ibsen's provocative three-act play, originally published in 1879, explores the life of a 19th-century wife, ready to disregard social customs and financial security for a shot at independence.
Wintry Night
An epic spanning more than half a century of Taiwan's history, this breathtaking historical novel traces the fortunes of the Pengs, a family of Hakka Chinese settlers, across three generations from the 1890s, just before Taiwan was ceded to Japan as a result of the Sino-Japanese war, through World War II. Li Qiao brilliantly re-creates the dramatic world of these pioneers and the colonization of Taiwan itself, exploring their relationships with the aboriginal peoples of Taiwan and their struggle to establish their own ethnic and political identities.