In Kipling’s 1912 story, As Easy As A.B.C., set 65 years after it’s predecessor With the Night Mail, the Aerial Board has complete control over the social and economic affairs of every nation. When a mob of disgruntled Serviles in the District of Northern Illinois demands the return of democracy, the A.B.C. sends a team of troubleshooters and a fleet of 200 zeppelins to take such steps as might be necessary for the resumption of traffic and all that that implies.

This wonderful classic combines three unbeatable elements: a sea story, lively and dynamic characters, and a protagonist who undergoes a transformation.

Harvey Cheyne is the pampered son of a multimillionaire who falls off an ocean liner and is rescued by a small fishing boat. After being punched in the nose by the captain of the small vessel for smart-mouthing him, Harvey quickly learns respect, toughness, and gratitude. He steps up from self-centeredness into the difficult but fulfilling realm of self-reliance and unselfishness.

A popular favorite since its first publication in 1897, the novel remains a classic story of youthful initiation and a lively tribute to the author’s famous code of bravery, loyalty, and honor among men.

Captains Courageous is Rudyard Kipling’ s classic fable of a boy’ s initiation into the fellowship of men, played out on the high seas of the late 1800s. When he falls overboard from a luxury liner, Harvey Cheyne, the spoiled son of an American millionaire, is rescued by a small New England fishing schooner. To earn his keep, Harvey must prove his worth in the only way the skipper and his hardy crew will accept: through the grueling mastery of a fisherman’ s skills. Brimming with salty dialogue, crackling adventure, and mesmerizing visions of the sea, Captains Courageous is one of this Nobel Prize-winning author’ s most enduringly popular tales.

– En Español Neutro- es posible que la muerte deje tras de si la puerta abierta de nuestras vidas pasadas ? es posible que podamos encontrar en medio de nuestras meditaciones los secretos mas obscuros y las aventuras mas increíbles jamás contadas ? quizá la historia entera de la humanidad podría ser reescrita, eso claro si tan solo lográsemos recordar…

Experiencing a story read out loud is one of the oldest forms of entertainment there is.

Fireside Reading is a way to slow down, reconnect with the timeless wisdom of great books and rediscover the simple pleasure of being read to.

Join Gildart Jackson in front of a cozy fire as he reads The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling to you and your family from beginning to end.

“If-” is a timeless classic, a masterpiece about keeping your balance in a topsy-turvy world and maintaining personal integrity. A phenomenal poem by English Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), written circa 1895 as a tribute to Leander Starr Jameson, it is a literary example of Victorian-era stoicism. Among other nuggets, it advocates the idea of not allowing your successes to go to your head or allowing your failures to go to your heart. A great stabilizer for everyone. It contains truly sage advice needed now more than ever!
The poem is written in the form of paternal advice to the poet’s son, John. A succinct yet tremendously potent body of work. A must-have for every library.

Let young adults discover the exotic landscape, the wondrous magic, and the fascinating menagerie of creatures-jaguars and kangaroos, hedgehogs and leopards-that have made Rudyard Kipling’s Just-So Stories worldwide favorites for a century. Included: The Crab that Played with the Sea, How the Camel Got His Hump, and ten others.

Drawing from the oral storytelling traditions of India and Africa, Nobel Prize winner Rudyard Kipling’s vigorous, amusing tales offer imaginative answers to unanswered questions about animals and provide little pearls of wisdom. Kipling began inventing these stories in his American wife’s hometown of Brattleboro, Vermont, to amuse his eldest daughter. Over 100 years later, these classic tales, filled with playfully clever animals and people, are still entertaining children and adults alike. “How the Camel Got His Hump,” “How the Leopard Got His Spots,” and “How the Alphabet Was Made” are just three of the twelve enlightening short stories.

A dozen fables by one of the world’s great storytellers.
 
The twelve magical JUST SO STORIES tell, how the leopard got his spots? Why the rhinoceros  has his wrinkly skin? Why is a kangaroo very fast on land? Why won’t cats come when they’re called? And, how one curious elephant with a nose for trouble changed the lives of all elephants everywhere? Many of the tales are origin stories, explaining how an animal came to be the way it is. These delightful tales will hold the listener spellbound.

Rudyard Kipling’s classic collection of short stories for children reveals the magic of the dawn of the world, when animals could talk and think like people. Filled with animals of all shapes and sizes, these enchanting tales explain how the leopard got his spots, the elephant his trunk, and the camel his hump. Following the conventions of traditional folklore and legends, Just So Stories‘ fanciful narratives are sure to delight both children and adults.

Drawn from the enchanting tales told to Kipling as a child in India, Just So Stories reveals the magic of the dawn of the world, when animals could talk and think like people. Cats and dogs, kangaroos and tortoises, hedgehogs and jaguars, whales and leopards, and many others are brought to life in an exotic Eastern landscape of “high and far times ago.” Children will discover how the leopard got his spots, the elephant his trunk, and the camel his hump, through clever tales that subtly hint at the pitfalls of arrogance and the importance of creativity. Kipling composed these twelve stories and twelve poems to be read aloud, and their whimsical imagery and rhythmic language are sure to delight both children and adults for another hundred years.

Table of Contents

1. “How the Whale Got His Throat” 2. “How the Camel Got His Hump” 3. “How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin” 4. “How the Leopard Got His Spots” 5. “The Elephant’s Child” 6. “The Sing Song of Old Man Kangaroo” 7. “The Beginning of the Armadillos” 8. “How the First Letter Was Written” 9. “How the Alphabet Was Made” 10. “The Crab That Played with the Sea” 11. “The Cat That Walked by Himself” 12. “The Butterfly That Stamped”

Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling provides a rare study of the exotic opulence and the political conflict of British-ruled India in this classic story of the friendship between a British boy and an Indian priest. This is Kipling’s only full-length novel, and it offers young adults an excellent study of the Oriental landscape, the literary style, and the recurring themes of one of this century’s greatest storytellers.

“In all India is no one so alone as I!”
Rudyard Kipling’s Kim is the story of Kimball O’Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, who spends his childhood as a vagabond in Lahore. With an old Tibetan lama he travels through India, enthralled by the “roaring whirl” of the landscape and cities of richly colored bazaars and immense diversity of people.
The novel is a masterpiece of careful organization and skillfully manipulated narrative techniques. By portraying Kim’s utter devotion to the lama and his ability to share the life of the common people intimately and unself-consciously, Kipling creates a vision of harmony-and of India-that unites the secular and the spiritual, the life of action with that of contemplation.

Kimball O’Hara is an Irish orphan, but he runs free in the streets of India. As a boy, he shows self-reliance and resourcefulness, running errands for Mahbub Ali, who works for the British Secret Service. Kim also meets a Tibetan lama who is on a quest to be freed from the Wheel of Life and becomes his disciple. Together they have wonderful adventures on the exotically colorful Grand Trunk Road through the Indian countryside. Then Kim is pulled into the great game of British imperial espionage and becomes a member of the Secret Service, even capturing documents from the enemy spies. Yet Kim is greatly attached to the lama and begins to feel the conflicting pulls between a life of contemplation and one of action.

Kiplilng’s love for India and its people is evidient throughout this classic story, and its images and characters will stay with you long after you finish the final chapter.

Rudyard Kipling’s best-loved book is now the basis for the Netflix film Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Benedict Cumberbatch, Freida Pinto, and Rohan Chand

The story of Mowgli, the abandoned “man-cub” who is brought up by wolves in the jungles of Central India, is one of the greatest literary myths ever created. As he embarks on a series of thrilling escapades, Mowgli encounters such unforgettable creatures as the bear Baloo, the graceful black panther Bagheera and Shere Khan, the tiger with the blazing eyes. Other animal stories in The Jungle Books range from the dramatic battle between good and evil in “Rikki-tikki-tav” to the macabre comedy, “The Undertakers.” With The Jungle Books, Rudyard Kipling drew on ancient beast fables, Buddhist philosophy, and memories of his Anglo-Indian childhood to create a rich, symbolic portrait of man and nature, and an eternal classic of childhood.

Narrated by Ralph Lister with (in order of appearance):
John Lee
Scott Brick
Paul Boehmer
Dominic Hoffman
Nicholas Guy Smith
Shirshir Kurup
Deepti Gupta
Steve West
Ann Marie Lee
Rebecca Lowman

Including the stories “Lispeth,” “Beyond the Pale,” and “In the Pride of His Youth,” this collection tells of soldiers, wise children, exiles, forbidden romances and divided identities, creating a rich portrait of Anglo-Indian society. Originally published for a newspaper in Lahore when Kipling was a journalist, the tales were later revised by him to re-create as vividly as possible the sights and smells of India for readers at home. Far from being a celebration of empire, these stories explore the barriers between races, classes and sexes, and convey all the tensions and contradictions of colonial life.

On Midsummer’s Eve, Dan and Una enact A Midsummer Night’s Dream three times over–right under Pook’s Hill. That is how they meet Puck, “the oldest Old Thing in England,” and the last of the People of the Hills.

Through Puck, they are introduced to the nearly forgotten pages of old England’s history and to characters that can illuminate their own historical predicaments. The god Weland is freed from an unwanted heathen immortality by a novice monk, Hugh, who goes on to become a warrior and leader. The centurion, Parnesius, shows an insight which is absent from the higher echelons of the declining Roman Empire in cooperating with the Picts.

Originally published in 1906, this collection of ten stories and accompanying poems were intended for both adults and children.

On Midsummer Eve in a Sussex meadow, Dan and Una act out their version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Suddenly, Puck, as old as Time itself, miraculously appears. The youngsters are swept into the past as Puck conjures up villages of long ago, filled with craftsmen, a Roman centurion, and a Norman knight. Rudyard Kipling’s magical tale brings English history dramatically to life to captivate both the young and the young at heart.

Stalky & Co. is a book published in 1899 (following serialization in the Windsor Magazine) by Rudyard Kipling, about adolescent boys at a British boarding school. It is a collection of linked short stories in format, with some information about the charismatic Stalky character in later life. The character Beetle, one of the main trio, is partly based on Kipling himself. Stalky is based on Lionel Dunsterville, M’Turk is based on George Charles Beresford, Mr King is based on William Carr Crofts. The school, which is referred to as the College or the Coll. is based on the United Services College in Devon which Kipling attended. The stories have elements of revenge, the macabre (dead cats), bullying and violence, and hints about sex, making them far from childish or idealized, unlike the typical school story. The critic Edmund Wilson, in The Wound and the Bow, was both shocked and uncomprehending about them. For example, Beetle pokes fun at an earlier, more earnest, boys’ book, Eric, or, Little by Little, thus flaunting his more worldly outlook.

Based on Rudyard Kipling’s own adolescent experiences, Stalky and Co. is a cunning story of mischievous nineteenth-century British schoolboys attempting scholastic mutiny. The faculty and headmaster of a boys’ private school repeatedly pursue a trio of poetic pranksters-“Stalky,” “Beetle,” and “Turkey”-as they wage war on fellow students and the “establishment” with unwavering energy and creativity.
Stalky and Co. is at times poignant in its realistic portrayal of boys negotiating manhood and hilarious in its illustration of their relentless attempts to beat the system, even in the face of creative punishment and a savvy housemaster. Listeners of all ages will delight in this tale of ingenious schemes and rebellious antics.

“Oh hear the call!-Good hunting all / That keep the Jungle Law!” -Night-Song in the Jungle
When young little Mowgli’s parents are run out of their camp by a formidable Bengal tiger, the toddler scampers to safety alone in the cave of a Seeonee wolf pack. Thereafter, forest animals succor Mowgli, and through his wits and their kindness, he reaches adulthood.
Paradox exists in this paradise, but nowhere more forcefully than in the Bengal tiger, Shere Khan. In the contest that must occur between Shere Khan and Mowgli, which will triumph: the human intelligence of Mowgli, or the deep, instinctive cunning of the wily striped cat?
Rudyard Kipling, who was forced to learn the art of self-preservation at a foster home and boarding school, believed in following the “Law of the Jungle.” Part silly, part serious, the delightful stories in The Jungle Book convey Kipling’s message in a way that children and adults alike appreciate.

The Jungle Book is a collection of stories, originally published in magazines in the late 1800s, which involve animals with anthropomorphic characteristics to convey moral lessons. The most famous of these stories involve a young Indian boy named Mowgli who was raised by wolves in the Indian Jungle. He and his friends Baloo, a sloth bear, and Bagheera, a black panther, go on many adventures culminating to a fight with the jungle’s bully, the tiger Shere Khan. Containing other famous stories such as Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and Toomai of the Elephants, this collection of Rudyard Kipling’s most famous stories encompasses his time living in India and the wonders of the Indian jungle.

First published in 1894, the Jungle Book is perhaps Rudyard Kiplings most well regarded and beloved book.
Containing not just the adventures of Mowgli, but also that of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and Kotick the White Seal, the Jungle Book explores themes such as fostering and of the laws of society.
Narrated by Michael Ward.

Children everywhere have read and loved Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book—and continue to do so. Here Blackstone offers this collection of moral fables in its entirety.

Tales of Mowgli, the boy raised by animals in the exotic jungles of India; Rikki-tikki-tavi, a courageous young mongoose who battles the sinister black cobra Nag; Toomai, the boy who works with elephants; and more will delight listeners both young and old. These classic stories brim with adventure and thrills as the lively characters fend off ferocious tigers and deadly snakes, slip through the jungle to watch elephants dance, and seek refuge from dangerous hunters.

Do you want to listen to The Jungle Book? If so then keep reading…
Orphaned as a baby, human-boy Mowgli is adopted by wolves, befriended by Baloo the bear, and educated in the wonders and dangers of the Indian jungle. But the adventures of The Jungle Book don’t end with the young man-cub and his unusual new family. Through tales of Kotick the White Seal, Rikki-tikki-tavi the mongoose, and others, readers learn about courage and survival, rules and order, principles and morals, coming-of-age, and the thrill of self-discovery.
Rudyard Kipling’s fables reflect both his childhood in India and his vivid imagination, while exploring the relationship between civilization and the wild.
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The Jungle Books, published in 1894 and 1895, and set in the far-away climes of India and the Aleutians, was actually written during the four years Kipling lived in the United States. Book I of The Jungle Books introduces us to all of the wonderful Kipling jungle characters: Bagheera, the black panther; Shere Khan, the lame but evil tiger who lives near the Waingunga River; Mowgli, the man-cub; Toomai of the Elephants; Kaa the Rock Python snake; Baloo, the sleepy brown bear whose job it is to teach the wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle; and many more. Part One includes the following stories: Mowgli’s Brother; Kaa’s Hunting; ‘Tiger-Tiger!’; The White Seal; ‘Rikki-Tikki-Tavi’; Toomai of the Elephants; and Servants of the Queen

” The great panther leaped as a kitten leaps at a dead leaf whirling overhead, struck left and right into the empty air that sung under the strokes, landed noiselessly and leaped again and again, while the half purr, half growl gathered head as steam rumbles in a boiler. ‘ I am Bagheera– in the jungle– in the night, and my strength is in me. Who shall stay my stroke?'” — from ” Letting in the Jungle” For Rudyard Kipling, the jungle was at once a fierce and an infinitely gentle place. The Noah’ s Ark assortment of animal characters that populate his stories are endowed with personality and temperament– their human counterparts are not difficult to recognize. Even Mowgli, the wolf-child, is secondary to the magnetism and allure of the jungle and its exotic creatures. Part Two includes the following stories: How Fear Came; The Law of the Jungle; The Miracle of Purun Bhagat; A Song of Kabir; Letting in the Jungle; Mowgli’ s Song Against People; The Undertakers; A Ripple Song; The King’ s Ankus; The Song of the Little Hunter; Quiquern; Angutivun Tina; Red Dog; Chil’ s Song, The Spring Running; and The Outsong.

Dick Heldar is a war correspondent and an artist, well known for the drawings he sends home to the London papers from wars in exotic places like Sudan. When he returns to London, he attempts to make a career for himself as a serious artist and reencounters his childhood sweetheart, Maisie. Then he learns that a minor problem with his eyes is actually the onset of an incurable blindness, the result of a head injury during the war. As his vision fails, the light of everything around him—his life, hopes, and dreams—fails with it. Terrible choices must be made between the love of a woman and the love of the men who stood by him at the front.

Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King” is one of literature’s greatest and most famous adventure stories. This stirring tale of two happy-go-lucky British ne’er-do-wells trying to carve out their own kingdom in the remote mountains of Afghanistan has also proved over time to be a work of penetrating and lasting political insight-amidst its raucous humor and swashbuckling bravado is a devastatingly astute dissection of imperialism and its heroic pretensions.
Written when he was only twenty-two years old, the tale also features some of Kipling’s most crystalline prose and one of the most beautifully rendered, spectacularly exotic settings he ever used. Best of all, it features two of his most unforgettable characters: the ultra-vivid Cockneys Peachy Carnahan and Daniel Dravot, who impart to the story its ultimate, astonishing twist.
Also included in this collection are “Wee Willie Winkie,” “The Drums of the Fore and Aft,” “Mary Postgate,” and “The Maltese Cat.”

In the year 1838, a young adventurer, surrounded by his native troops and mounted on an elephant, raised the American flag on the summit of the Hindu Kush in the mountainous wilds of Afghanistan. He declared himself Prince of Ghor, Lord of the Hazarahs, spiritual and military heir to Alexander the Great. The true story of Josiah Harlan, a Pennsylvania Quaker and the first American ever to enter Afghanistan, has never been told before, yet the life and writings of this extraordinary man echo down the centuries, as America finds itself embroiled once more in the land he first explored and described 180 years ago. Soldier, spy, doctor, naturalist, traveler, and writer, Josiah Harlan wanted to be a king, with all the imperialist hubris of his times. In an extraordinary twenty-year journey around Central Asia, he was variously employed as surgeon to the Maharaja of Punjab, revolutionary agent for the exiled Afghan king, and then commander in chief of the Afghan armies. In 1838, he set off in the footsteps of Alexander the Great across the Hindu Kush and forged his own kingdom, only to be ejected from Afghanistan a few months later by the invading British. Using a trove of newly discovered documents and Harlan’s own unpublished journals, Ben Macintyre tells the astonishing true story of the man who would be the first and last American king.

This collection brings together seventeen of Kipling’s early stories, written between 1885 and 1888, when he was working as a journalist in India. Wry comedies of British officialdom alternate with glimpses into the harsh lives of the common soldiers and the Indian poor, revealing Kipling’s legendary powers of observation. The title story, “The Man Who Would Be King,” tells of two British vagabonds who set off to establish a small kingdom among primitive tribesmen in Afghanistan.

From Hauksbee’s Simla drawing room to Mulvaney’s barracks cot and the wild hills of Kafiristan, Kipling re-creates the India he knew in stories by turns ironic and sentimental, compassionate and bitter, displaying the brilliance that has captivated readers for over a century.

Stories included here are “The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes,” “The Phantom Rickshaw,” “Gemini,” “A Wayside Comedy,” “At Twenty-Two,” “The Education of Otis Yeere,” “The Hill of Illusion,” “Dray Wara Yow Dee,” “The Judgment of Dungara,” “With the Main Guard,” “In Flood Time,” “Only a Subaltern,” “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,” “At the Pit’s Mouth,” “Black Jack,” “On the City Wall,” and “The Man Who Would Be King.”

A continuation of The Jungle Book, these further adventures of Mowgli the man-cub and his animal companions are sure to delight listeners of all ages. Vibrant and crackling with intensity, these stories present Akela the wolf; Baloo the brown bear; Shere Khan, the boastful Bengal tiger who is Mowgli’s enemy; Kaa the python; Bagheera the black panther; and Rikki-tikki-tavi the mongoose, among others. Kipling vividly describes the jungle world and its peculiar animals, richly evoking an Edenic environment. As Mowgli learns the Law of the Jungle among the animals, he matures into self-sufficiency and wisdom.

The Second Jungle Book is the sequel to Rudyard Kipling’s acclaimed collection of stories about the Indian jungle. These new stories were published a year after the original, and mostly focus on the same characters including Mowgli, Baloo, and Beeghera. Similar to his first collection of fables, this sequel also contains a poem at the end of every story, showcasing Rudyard’s knowledge of the politics of the time, as well as his passion for the Indian Jungle.

Rudyard Kipling’s thrilling science fiction novella follows the exploits of an intercontinental mail dirigible battling foul weather. Meanwhile, a planet-wide Aerial Board of Control enforces a rigid system of command and control in the skies and in world affairs, too. In Kipling’s 1912 follow-up story, ‘As Easy As A.B.C.,’ set 65 years after With the Night Mail, the Aerial Board has complete control over the social and economic affairs of every nation. When a mob of disgruntled ‘Serviles’ in the District of Northern Illinois demands the return of democracy, the A.B.C. sends a team of troubleshooters and a fleet of 200 zeppelins to ‘take such steps as might be necessary for the resumption of traffic and all that that implies.’

Rudyard Kipling’s thrilling science fiction novella With the Night Mail, follows the exploits of an intercontinental mail dirigible battling foul weather. Meanwhile, a planet-wide Aerial Board of Control enforces a rigid system of command and control in the skies and in world affairs, too.