The colorful artwork leaps off the page while the stories bring you right to the heart of how it feels to be alive today.

    You can focus on the joy of reading in Spanish, rather than struggling through dense text with no support An expert, five-step guide to reading Spanish effectively, so you can become a better learner, and use reading as a tool to become fluent Spanish Short Stories for Intermediate Learners has been written especially for students at intermediate level (B1-B2 on the Common European Framework of Reference). The stories are written in carefully graded Spanish that avoids much of the obscure vocabulary and ambiguous grammar that has frustrated you when you’ve tried to read Spanish in the past. With this book, you’ll have a sense of achievement and feeling of progress when reading. You’ll finally be able to enjoy reading in Spanish, grow your vocabulary in a natural way, and improve your comprehension at the same time. Based on extensive research into how people most enjoy and benefit from reading in a new language, you’ll no longer suffer from these common difficulties associated with reading Spanish: Dull topics that are no fun to read Books so long you never reach the end Endless chapters that make you want to give up Impenetrable grammar that frustrates you at every turn Complex vocabulary that leaves you with your head buried in the dictionary Instead, you can just concentrate on what you came for in the first place - enjoying reading and having fun! If you’ve been learning Spanish for a while, and are ready to take your skills to the next level, this is the book you need! So what are you waiting for? Scroll up and grab your copy now!

    The wind tries first, but however hard it blows it fails to make any progress because the traveller simply buttons his coat even tighter than before. Only when the sun shines brightly does he finally remove it, and the wind roars away in a bad temper.

    The acclaimed translator Katherine Silver has greatly revised her original translation, enlivening afresh this remarkable work.

    But his scream wasn’t the scream of a child—it was the scream of an old, old man.“Come back, come back,” screamed the ghost in his cracked old voice. “Don’t leave me. Don’t go!”Twelve-year-old David lives with his dad in a big old apartment building called Mahogany Villas. When he discovers he can climb through the vent pipes in the building and get into other apartments and play tricks on people, he simply can’t resist.His main victim is Robert Alveston, a forgetful man in his nineties who is afraid that he is losing his mind. But David’s nasty pranks soon disturb more than his elderly neighbor. One day he comes face-to-face with a ghost, at first friendly but more and more terrifying as it becomes clear that he has a particular grudge against Mr Alveston. Soon both the old man and David are in great danger.

    Whether it's trying to arrange a marriage for his sister or taking a job as a boot boy as step one in his grand plan to run away, Just William manages to cause chaos wherever he goes.

    There are relatively recent stories based on modern technology, such as the classic microwaved pet, and yarns that have been making the urban-legend circuit for decades, such as the solid-cement-Cadillac story, which can be traced back to the 1940s, at least, involving a cement-truck driver who spies a new Cadillac convertible in his driveway and his wife talking to some strange man. He dumps his load of concrete on the Cadillac, but later discovers the stranger was a car dealer and the car was to be a gift from his wife, one she'd spent years saving her pennies for. The stories are grouped by subject, including "Dog Tales" and "Just Desserts," "Sexcapades" and "Losing Face." There are baby stories and work stories, criminal tales and college anecdotes, plus stories of mistaken identity, human nature, and technology. Brunvand achieves more, however, than a mere compendium of highly entertaining stories. He discusses the nature of urban legends--those almost believable, addictively retellable tales that always happened to a friend of a friend (FOAF, in folklorist parlance)--and for each individual story, Brunvand includes as much of its history as he has been able to trace, including newspaper accounts, alternative versions, and the story's natural cycle, that is, how many years, typically, between resurfacings. The result is an exceptionally engaging book and a great resource for debunking that next story, as heard from a friend by that unnamed acquaintance of unassailable honesty, that sounds just a little too perfect to swallow whole. --Stephanie Gold

    CONTENTS:* Beauty and the Beast 6* Rapunzel 26* Aladdin 48* The Sleeping Beauty 68* Cinderella 88* The Princess and the Pea 110* Snow White 132* The Steadfast Tin Soldier 154* Thumbelina 176* The Frog Prince 196* Pinocchio 218* The Emperor's New Clothes 238* The Little Mermaid 260* The Jungle Book 280* The Twelve Dancing Princesses 302* Peter Pan 324* Robin Hood 344* The Velveteen Rabbit 364

    This selection includes almost all of his short stories, including "The Canterville Ghost," "The Fisherman and his Soul," and "The Remarkable Rocket." Alongside THE MODEL MILLIONAIRE, Harper Perennial will publish the short fiction of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Herman Melville, Willa Cather, Leo Tolstoy, and Stephen Crane to be packaged in a beautifully designed, boldly colorful boxset in the aim to attract contemporary fans of short fiction to these revered masters of the form. Also, in each of these selections will appear a story from one of the new collections being published in the "Summer of the Short Story." A story from Simon Van Booy's forthcoming collection, LOVE BEGINS IN WINTER, will be printed at the back of this volume.

    "Unusual Occupations," the second chapter, describes the obsessions and predilections of the narrator's family, including the lodging of a tiger-just one tiger- "for the sole purpose of seeing the mechanism at work in all its complexity." Finally, the "Cronopios and Famas" section delightfully characterizes, in the words of Carlos Fuentes, "those enemies of pomposity, academic rigor mortis and cardboard celebrity-a band of literary Marx Brothers."

    The journey is treacherous and sometimes deadly, but worth the risk for migrants who are escaping gang violence and poverty in their home countries. And for those refugees who do succeed? They face an immigration process that is as winding and multi-tiered as the journey that brought them here.In this book, award-winning Mexican author Juan Pablo Villalobos strings together the diverse experiences of eleven real migrant teenagers, offering readers a beginning road map to issues facing the region. These timely accounts of courage, sacrifice, and survival—including two fourteen-year-old girls forming a tenuous friendship as they wait in a frigid holding cell, a boy in Chicago beginning to craft his future while piecing together his past in El Salvador, and cousins learning to lift each other up through angry waters—offer a rare and invaluable window into the U.S.–Central American refugee crisis.In turns optimistic and heartbreaking, The Other Side balances the boundless hope at the center of immigration with the weight of its risks and repercussions. Here is a necessary read for young people on both sides of the issue.

    Dr. Mac, her veterinarian grandmother, puts her on a short leash until her grades improve. Four new volunteers show up to help Gran in the clinic, but none of them knows a boxer from a pug. When the clinic is flooded with sick and dying puppies, Maggie has to find a way to help, no matter what Gran says. Maggie is sure it can’t be a coincidence—somebody must be running a puppy mill. If she doesn’t find it soon, more puppies will die! Homeless Cats love Sunita Patel, and she loves them back. Since her mother won’t let her have a kitty of her own, finding a feral cat colony is a dream come true. But Animal Control is going to destroy all of the cats unless Sunita does something drastic. If she can tame one of the wild cats, maybe she can save them all. Then disaster strikes and Sunita is rushed to the hospital! What will happen to the cats now? Trickster David Hutchinson is a funny, goofy guy who is always looking for the easy way out of his chores. He also has a gift with horses. When he meets Trickster, a high-spirited chestnut gelding recuperating from an accident, David vows that he will one day ride him. But his reputation for messing up gets in the way of his dream. Things go from bad to worse when a mysterious illness races through the stables. Can David find a way to help Trickster survive?

    There Felipe meets her beautiful green-eyed niece, Aura. His passion for Aura and his gradual discovery of the true relationship between the young woman and her aunt propel the story to its extraordinary conclusion.

    Once ignited, their passion cannot be ignored, but is it enough to bridge the enormous social gulf that separates them?

    In "Mercury Rain" a soldier fighting a new enemy learns the importance of holding on to his memories. "Blackwater," the title story of the collection, is an homage to Stephen King's short story, "Graveyard Shift," and it tells the tale of Paul Hawkins, a mine worker who disturbs something terrifying in the Blackwater Hills of Durham, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1976.