Castles Tales

Newbery Honor author of Ella Enchanted Gail Carson Levine weaves a spellbinding tale about a clever heroine, a dragon detective, and a shape-shifting ogre. Newly arrived in the town of Two Castles, Elodie unexpectedly becomes the assistant to a brilliant dragon named Meenore, and together they solve mysteries. Their most important case concerns the town’s shape-shifting ogre, Count Jonty Um: Someone is plotting against him. Elodie must disguise herself to discover the source of the threat amid a cast of characters that includes a greedy king, a giddy princess, and a handsome cat trainer. Readers who loved Ella Enchanted and Fairest will delight in this tale of a spirited heroine who finds friendship where she least expects it and discovers that goodness and evil come in all shapes and sizes.

Synopsis coming soon.......

An anthology of essays from the second year of the English Historical Fiction Authors blog, this book transports the reader across the centuries from prehistoric to twentieth century Britain. Nearly fifty different authors share the stories, incidents, and insights discovered while doing research for their own historical novels. From medieval law and literature to Tudor queens and courtiers, from Stuart royals and rebels to Regency soldiers and social calls, experience the panorama of Britain's yesteryear. Explore the history behind the fiction, and discover the true tales surrounding Britain's castles, customs, and kings.

From the unusual to the more traditional construction, Colorado castles are both the solidification of a dream as well as a declaration of power. This book details 20 of the most extravagant castles to be found.

"Born to an artistocratic Catholic family, Hermynia zur Mühlen became a prolific writer and translator sometimes called the Red Countess for her left-wing ideas and revolutionary spirit. She began to write during the several years she spent in a sanitorium for tuberculosis, a disease she battled for the rest of her life. Exiled from Germany in the 1930s for her anti-Nazi convictions and her relationship with the German Jewish translator Stefan Klein, she eventually fled to England, where she spent her final years. The 17 fairy tales selected for this book were written primarily during her radical Weimar years and demonstrate the innovative techniques she used to raise the political consciousness of readers young and old. In contrast to the classical fairy tales of Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen, Zur Mühlen's focus was on the plight of the working class and the cause of social justice. The endings of her tales were intended to encouarge political action. In "The Glasses," for example, readers are encouraged to rip off the glasses that deceive them; in "The Servant," readers learn that they must share the means of production to serve the people and not just the ruling classes. In "The Carriage Horse," horses organize a union to resist their working and living conditions. In "The Broom," a young worker learns how to sweep away injustice with a magic broom. As the scholar Lionel Grossman has written (quoted by Zipes in the introduction), "Zur Mühlen's fairy tales prescribe models of behavior radically opposed to those of traditional fairy tales, the basic lesson of which had been all that one's wishes will come true if one overcomes temptation and faithfully observes established norms of good conduct." The volume will include illustrations that originally accompanied the German tales, by George Grosz, Karl Holtz, Heinrich Vogeler, and other artists of the Weimar Republic. Jack Zipes's introduction provides biographical details and historical context"--

AUGIE BORETSKI KNOWS how to get by. If you're a scrawny loser in the destitute city of Camden, New Jersey, you keep your head down, avoid the drug dealers and thugs, and try your best to be invisible. Augie used to be good at that, but suddenly his life is changing. . . . First, Augie accidentally steals a strange book of fairy tales. Then his mom makes him join the Big Brothers program and the chorus. And two bullies try to beat him up every day because of it. Just when it seems like things can't get any worse, an ice storm wrecks Augie's school. The city plans to close the school, abandoning one more building to the drug addicts. But Augie has a plan. For the first time in his life, Augie Boretski is not going down without a fight.

Horror legend Ray Russell’s haunting and macabre stories, including “perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written” (Stephen King), with a foreword by acclaimed filmmaker Guillermo del Toro Haunted Castles is the definitive, complete collection of Ray Russell’s masterful Gothic horror stories, including the famously terrifying novella trio of “Sardonicus,” “Sanguinarius,” and “Sagittarius.” The characters that sprawl through Haunted Castles are frightful to the core: the heartless monster holding two lovers in limbo; the beautiful dame journeying down a damned road toward depravity (with the help of an evil gypsy); the man who must wear his fatal crimes on his face in the form of an awful smile. Engrossing, grotesque, and completely entrancing, Russell’s Gothic tales are the best kind of dreadful. 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.

TEENAGE GIRLS CAN BE SAVAGE. Six teenage girls. One deserted island. Removed from civilised society, can they challenge class, identity and toxic femininity to pull together and survive? Or will they descend into savagery? This is the debut novel from Kate Castle, author of the Amazon.com best-selling novella 'Born of the Sea'.

Four children find a magic way to go back into the time of Ivanhoe and Robin Hood.

When the Count's niece is kidnapped by elves, Kevin, a bard's apprentice, agrees to locate the young woman, unaware that she is not actually the Count's niece and that the elves are not actually elves.