Rebecca Burns

"The night before Esther's ship was due to dock, her sister dreamed of her." Auckland at the turn of the century. A city on the cusp of change. Isobel, a settler of ten years, waits for her sister to cross the ocean to join her. Separated by distance, disappointments and secrets, the women reunite in a land where the rules of home do not apply. Women push for the vote and the land offers opportunity and a future for those brave enough to take it....

That dandelion. A flash of stubborn yellow in a dark box of space. It had promised sunshine but had tasted sour. Artefacts. A dandelion. A mayfly. A family, bereft. Items and mementos of a life, lived hard and with love, or long, empty, bitter. In these sharply drawn and unflinching short stories, Rebecca Burns unpicks the connection between the lives we live and what we leave behind.

This “warmly delightful, vigorously affirmative” memoir of a woman homesteader in early twentieth-century Wyoming inspired the acclaimed film Heartland (The Wall Street Journal).
 
In 1909, Elinore Pruitt answered an ad in the Denver Post to become Henry Clyde Stewart’s housekeeper on his homestead outside Burntfork, Wyoming. Elinore soon fell in love with the...

In early twentieth-century Vermont, orphaned, eleven-year-old Pollyanna comes to live with her austere and wealthy Aunt Polly, and uses her philosophy of gladness to bring happiness to her aunt and other unhappy members of the community.

A lonely woodcutter creates a puppet that comes to life, but Pinocchio is more of a prankster than a pleasure until he learns that being a real boy is much more complicated than simply having fun.

Charles Perrault's classic and timeless "Cinderella" holds a special place in all children's hearts. Sweet, beautiful Cinderella is cruelly mistreated by her evil stepmother and stepsisters until her magical fairy godmother appears, turns Cinderella's rags into a sumptuous ball gown, and sends her off to win the heart of the handsome prince. Also included in this book are the classic tales "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood," "Little Red Riding Hood,"...

Louisa May Alcott's Little Women; or, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy (1868) follows the lives, loves and tribulations of four sisters growing up during the American Civil War. The story is based on the childhood experiences Alcott shared with her real-life sisters, Anna, May and Elizabeth. Alcott intricately explores the rich nuances of family and family relationships with each character. Avid Alcott readers often identify in themselves one of the four sisters...

"In my criminal work, everything that wears skirts is a lady, until the law proves her otherwise," declares Jack Knox, attorney at law and narrator of this sprightly mystery. Jack's cautiously chivalrous observation is prompted by the beauty and distress of his newest client, Margery Flemming. It seems that Margery's father, a crooked politician, has been missing for over a week. Unwilling to involve the police in her father's corrupt activities,...

The first novel by Mary Roberts Rinehart, America's queen of crime This is the story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind, deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective agencies happy and prosperous. So says Rachel Innes, the spinster in question and one of the most remarkable heroines in American...

In New England in the late nineteenth-century, a fatherless family, happy in spite of its impoverished condition, is befriended by a very rich gentleman and his young son.