Showing results by narrator "Michelle Ford" in All Categories

Every parent wants his or her child to be happy and grow into a productive, fulfilled adult...and according to parenting expert Maureen Healy, the secret to that success is in providing a foundation of inner confidence. Parents and teachers know that confidence and inner strength are important attributes, but in an era where self-worth is often measured by possessions and attractiveness, most have no idea how to model true inner confidence for their kids or how to help them cultivate it.

> Hideous Love is the fascinating story of gothic novelist Mary Shelley, who as a teen girl fled her restrictive home only to find herself in the shadow of a brilliant but moody boyfriend, famed poet Percy Shelley. It is the story of the mastermind behind one of the most iconic figures in all of literature: a monster constructed out of dead bodies and brought to life by the tragic Dr. Frankenstein. Mary wrote Frankenstein at the age of 19, but inspiration for the monster came from her life - the atmospheric European settings she visited, the dramas swirling around her, and the stimulating philosophical discussions with the greatest minds of the period.

Hermod and Havdor were foster brother and sister, raised by a King and Queen, and very close. They long had plans to wed each other when they were old enough. When the Queen fell ill, she made her husband promise that if he remarried, it must be to the Queen of Hetland. After his wife died, the King traveled to find this Queen of Hetland and ask for her hand in marriage. She quickly agreed and returned home with him.

One day while a prince was riding through a meadow he came across an old woman trapped in a ditch. The prince rescued the old woman and assisted her out of the ditch, safely. In return, the old woman told the prince about the most beautiful woman in the world and where to find her. The prince decided to take her advice and journey to find this beautiful woman. After several years of traveling the prince finally finds the beautiful woman, but now it is up to him to save her from her kidnapper and return her home safely.

Saki, who's real name was Hector Hugh Munro, was a British writer of witty and sometimes macabre stories. Critics consider him a master of the short story, and he is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Saki wrote hundreds of wonderful stories.

A king who was a fantastic hunter one day got himself lost in the forest. Unable to find his way back home, an old woman appeared and said she would help him get home, provided that he married her daughter. Although her daughter was beautiful and the king agreed, he did not trust his new wife. And so he hid away in a palace in the woods his seven children, six sons and a daughter, from his previous wife. The new queen began to suspect something was amiss, so she bribed the servants to reveal the truth to her.

What's the harm in a little white lie? Especially when it could carry so much good-a new life for a wounded soldier, catharsis after long years of war, and an opportunity for lady composer Olivia Delancey to finally hear her music played in public. Newspaper publisher Will Marsh refuses to compound the sins of his father's generation by taking money to print propaganda. But with the end of the wars in France and America, he needs something new to drive Londoners to grab his paper first.

Oscar Wilde was one of the most versatile writers who ever lived. He wrote classic plays, including The Importance of Being Ernest; one wildly popular and influential novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray; and a number of inventive and moving stories in The Happy Prince and Other Tales.

Stories included in this volume are: "The Nightingale and the Rose", "The Devoted Friend", "The Happy Prince", "The Remarkable Rocket", and "The Selfish Giant".

There was an old couple who were not able to have children and so they constantly prayed to be blessed with one - even one the size of a hazelnut. And that is exactly what they were given - a child the size of a hazelnut who never grew! When he reached the age of 15, his mother asked him what he planned on doing with his life, as he was so small but clever. He replied that he wanted to be a messenger, a thing which made his mother laugh because of his size. He proved her wrong though and showed that he could use his size as an advantage.

A widowed peasant man was left to raise his two twin children, a boy and a girl. He tried his best but nothing seemed to go right without a woman's touch. And so, he remarried and had more children but things were still not right - the stepmother was very mean to the twins, beating and starving them. This wasn't enough for the wicked stepmother and she decided to send them off into the woods where an evil witch lived. She tells the twins they are to go off and serve her sweet granny.

When the lives and stories of three people interconnect one summer at Hadleigh Hall, history ripples as if a stone has been dropped in Hadleigh's famous lily pond. All three lives are about to change forever, in ways that nobody could have foreseen. With paths winding across past and present, through love and war, something simple and bitter-sweet shows just how complex life can be.

Bunty McKenna's very ordinary husband has had a vasectomy - behind her back. Having found the invoice for said vasectomy, she starts to notice other things, too: like how much time her husband is spending at the gym, his new-found interest in clothes...and are his teeth looking whiter? In Bunty's mind, there can only be one explanation: he's having an affair.

What do a housewife from Hampshire, England, a pole dancer from Taranaki, New Zealand, a London publisher, and an LA soap starlet all have in common? Their lives have all been impacted by The Most Beautiful Man in the World. It's only when he's found floating face-down in his Hollywood pool that they discover the ugly truth - about themselves, about each other, and about the man they've chased around the globe and across the decades.

When Cally Parsons is made redundant from her steady job in marketing, she's not devastated - in fact, she's thrilled. Finally, she'll have time to spend with Paige, to make sure that having one parent never lets her daughter down. But when Paige blows out the candles on her ninth birthday, she makes a surprising wish: to meet her father for the first time.

Big Klaus and Little Klaus lived in the same village, but while Little Klaus only had one horse, Big Klaus had four. Big Klaus eventually strikes Little Klaus' one horse over the head with a blow that kills him. Upset and needing money, Little Klaus sets off to sell the horse skin in town. Cleverly, Little Klaus finds a way to make a lot of money from a farmer and a sexton, and then tricks Big Klaus into making a fool of himself. Big Klaus then tries to kill Little Klaus. Shame for Big Klaus - he should have learned by now that while Little Klaus might be little, he's also very clever.

In "Mrs. Packeltide's Tiger" the title character,a society lady, decides that "bagging a tiger" is the perfect way to trump her rival. She goes on a safari and pays a great deal to lure a very old tiger within range. The results, however, are very different from what she had planned.

A young princess, Fairer-Than-a-Fairy, is kidnapped by a jealous, mean, old fairy named Lagree, who locks her away because none of the fairies can stand to have a mortal girl said to be more beautiful than them. Lagree locks her away in a palace, with her dog and cat, and tells her to tend to a fire and to never let it burn out. In her solitude, she one day meets a prince whom Lagree has captured and changed into the form of a rainbow that she discovers in a fountain.

Martin entered town and saw a man dragging a cat by a string heading off to drown the creature. Martin offered to purchase the cat instead and spent the rest of the family's money on the cat. Outraged, his mother kicked him out of the house and off he went with the dog and cat. Martin worked honest labor for the next year, and then finds himself on quite an adventure after he rescues a burning damsel and takes her back to her father. From him, he receives a magical ring that seems to get him into more trouble.

Helen Lally is 22, the stunning daughter of an impoverished artist whose fame and fortune will soon be made. Woe to her for catching the eye of Clifford Wexford, a 35-year-old art dealer, rapaciously ambitious, eminently eligible and careless of all lives but his own. In the space of nine months in the ever-so-swinging '60s, Helen and Clifford meet, fall instantly in love, marry and produce the enchanting Nell. But there the want changes hands, as it will, time and again, in the course of this seductively high-spirited move.

Shocking family news forces Madeline Wetherby to abandon her plans to marry an earl and settle for upstart Manchester merchant Nash Quinn. When she discovers that her birth father is one of the weavers her husband is putting out of work-and a radical leader-Maddie must decide which family she truly desires, the man of her heart or the people of her blood.