"Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie" is an epic poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published in 1847. The poem follows an Acadian girl named Evangeline and her search for her lost love Gabriel, set during the time of the expulsion of the Acadians. The idea for the poem came from Longfellow's friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Longfellow used dactylic hexameter, imitated from Greek and Latin classics, though the choice was criticized.

A collection of Longfellow's finest work including Paul Revere's Ride, Footprints of the Sands of Time and The Song of Hiawatha.

Longfellow's great narrative poem has been unjustly neglected in recent years though it gives a sympathetic portrait especially of Hiawatha, reared by Nokomis, daughter of the Moon, and his bride Minehaha.

Two old poems of exciting events for the children in all of us.... Paul Revere's exciting midnight ride to warn all the neighbors in the countryside that the British were coming - one light if by land and two if by sea. And The Pied Piper of Hamelin.... He got rid of the pesky, hated rats, but when the villagers refused to pay for his services, the Pied Piper took matters into his own hands...and the villagers paid a very dear price, indeed, in the end.

The Pickwick Papers, Dickens' first novel, is a glorious romp through the pre-Reform Bill England of 1827. Traveling by stage-coach, the innocent but well-intentioned Pickwick and his equally naive friends, all in search of "interesting scenes and characters," are repeatedly saved from disaster by the resourceful and quick-witted Sam Weller.

Life was hard on the Nebraska prairie, but for Alexandra Bergson, daughter of a Swedish immigrant family, her love of the land gave her courage and strength. When Alexandra's father dies, she takes over the care of her family and management of the farm, so that the Bergsons can stay in the place they've chosen for their home. O Pioneers! tells the story of a remarkable heroine, and draws on Cather's own experience growing up on the lonely and wild American prairies.

When he takes his young son to a magic shop as a birthday present, a father finds it ever more difficult to separate what is illusion from what he begins to wonder is real magic. This is a wonderful trip into the world of fantasy for young listeners and parents alike.

The ghost that haunts Canterville Chase has built a marvelous career of midnight haunting. But when an American family moves in, they simply have no respect for permanent bloodstains, nightmarish chains, or ancient legends. They even throw pillows at him.

Here is the complete and unabridged tale of Ichabod Crane and his ill-fated visit to Sleepy Hollow. Half of the charm of the tale is Irving's beautiful prose, as he describes the glorious New England countryside. But of course there are chills galore when the Headless Horseman appears.

Unexplained events are happening at Oxford these days. Several students have been attacked at night by some strange form of wild animal. It can scale walls with cat-like agility. Its arms are as thin and as strong as steel bands. And there is one student who conducts midnight studies in his room with certain Egyptian artifacts. The most significant of which is a 6'7" tall mummy.

This brilliant new treatment of the world's oldest epic is a literary event on par with Seamus Heaney's wildly popular Beowulf translation. Esteemed translator and best-selling author Stephen Mitchell energizes a heroic tale so old it predates Homer's Iliad by more than a millennium.

A bird of good omen is murdered. A fickle crew is punished by supernatural, spectral beings. A skeletal ship is sighted moving against the wind and tide. The figure of Death along with a singular, gruesome companion man the fiendish craft. And as they draw closer, it becomes clear that the two play at dice for the soul of the ancient mariner. The result is nothing short of cataclysmic.

In Music as a Mirror of History, Great Courses favorite Professor Greenberg of San Francisco Performances returns with a fascinating and provocative premise: Despite the abstractness and the universality of music - and our habit of listening to it divorced from any historical context - music is a mirror of the historical setting in which it was created. Music carries a rich spectrum of social, cultural, historical, and philosophical information, all grounded in the life and experience of the composer.

How long would you walk, if the Devil sauntered up to you of an evening, and journeyed alongside of you? Young Goodman Brown is led by the Devil to a midnight ritual, where fire, blood, and water change his opinions of the nature of humanity.

The paw of a dead monkey is a talisman that grants its possessor three wishes, but the wishes come with an enormous price. The Monkey's Paw is a classic horror short story written by author W. W. Jacobs, first published in England in 1902.