Emigrating from Bohemia to Black Hawk, Nebraska, with her family, Antonia discovers no white-framed farmhouse or snug barn. Instead, the cultured Shimerda family finds itself huddled in a primitive sod house buffeted by the ceaselessly blowing winds on the Midwest prairie. For her childhood friend Jim Burden, Antonia comes to embody the elemental spirit of this frontier. Working alongside men, she survives without compromising the rich, deep power of her nature. And Willa Cather's lush descriptions of the rolling Nebraska grasslands interweave with the blossoming of a woman in the early days of the twentieth century in a novel that is an epic chronicle of America's past. My Antonia is one of those rare, highly prized works of great literature that not only enriches its readers but immerses them in a tale superbly told. The novel Cather herself considered her best, "My Antonia" is one of those rare, highly prized works of great literature that not only enriches its readers but immerses them in a tale superbly told.
With an Introduction by Marilyn Sides
and a New Afterword by Terese Svoboda

One of Rudyard Kipling's most enduringly popular works, "Captains Courageous" is both a stirring tale of the sea and a classic coming-of-age story. Harvey Cheyne, the pampered fifteen-year-old son of an American millionaire, is sailing to Europe when he falls overboard. Saved from drowning by a New England fishing schooner, he finds his rough new companions unimpressed by his wealth and shocked by his ignorance. He will have to prove his worth in the only way the captain and crew will accept: through the slow and arduous mastery of skills upon which their common survival depends.
With an Introduction by Marilyn Sides
and a New Afterword