After discovering the double identity of the wealthy Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula, a small group of people vow to rid the world of the evil vampire. Illustrated notes throughout the text explain the historical background of the story.

The orphaned Pip is serving as a blacksmith's apprentice when an unknown benefactor supplies the means for him to be educated in London as a gentleman of "great expectations."

"Penned by English Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling in 1894, The Jungle Book is a collection of allegorical stories that take place deep in the Indian jungle. The most famous stories of The Jungle Book are those featuring a young feral boy named Mowgli who was raised by wolves, is friends with a panther, and was educated by the animals of the jungle." -- "Set in the mystical depths of the Indian jungle, where tigers roam the land and monkeys swing...

The Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith. First published in 1776, the book offers one of the world's first collected descriptions of what builds nations' wealth, and is today a fundamental work in classical economics. By reflecting upon the economics at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the book touches upon such broad topics as the division of labour, productivity, and free markets....

"A band of frightful goblins has taken over the synagogue, and the villagers cannot celebrate at all! Hershel vows to help them. Using his wits, the clever trickster faces down one goblin after the next, night after night. But can one man alone save Hanukkah and live to tell the tale?" --

When Sophie Brinkmann meets Hector Guzman, her life is perfectly uneventful. She's a nurse and a single mother, living with her son in a sleepy Stockholm suburb. She likes Guzman's quiet charm and easy smile; she likes the way he welcomes her into his family. She quickly learns, though, that his smooth façade masks something much more sinister, he's the head of an international crime ring that is at war with a rival organization. Before she can...

A riveting history of the men and women whose discoveries and inventions at the end of the 18th century gave birth to the Romantic Age of Science, "The Age of Wonder" explores the earliest ideas of deep time and space, and the explorers of "dynamic science": an infinite, mysterious Nature waiting to be discovered. Three lives dominate the book: William Herschel, his sister Caroline, and Humphry Davy.

"It is 1913, and those who follow the news closely can see the world is teetering on the brink of war. Jack McColl, a Scottish car salesman with an uncanny ear for languages, has always hoped to make a job for himself as a spy. As his sales calls take him from city to great city--Hong Kong to Shanghai to San Francisco to New York--he moonlights collecting intelligence for His Majesty's Navy, but British espionage is in its infancy and Jack has nothing...

"Alfred Hitchcock was a strange child. Fat, lonely, burning with fear and ambition, his childhood was an isolated one, scented with fish from his father's shop. Afraid to leave his bedroom, he would plan great voyages, using railway timetables to plot an exact imaginary route across Europe. So how did this fearful figure become the one of the most respected film directors of the twentieth century?" --

A romp through the history of fonts and the lives of the great typographers, revealing the extent to which fonts are not only shaped by but also define the world in which we live.