Published to great acclaim and fierce controversy in 1866, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment has left an indelible mark on global literature and our modern world, and is still known worldwide as the quintessential Russian novel. Readers of all backgrounds have debated its historical, cultural, and spiritual dimensions, probing the moral and ethical dilemmas that Dostoevsky so brilliantly stages throughout his narrative. Yet, at its heart, this...

At the Barbary Asylum for Female Orphans, eleven-year-old Maud is adopted by three spinster sisters moonlighting as mediums who take her home and reveal to her the role she will play in their seances.

Penny feels guilty after taking a beautiful blue marble that she sees in Mrs. Goodwin's grass, but gets a pleasant surprise when she goes to return it the next day.

Forty years after becoming the Blue Fairy, Chiara Belmagio defies the rules of magic to help her old friend Geppetto, and when her sister--now the heartless Scarlet Fairy--discovers the transgression, they decide to settle things with a wager, with the lives of Geppetto and Pinocchio hanging in the balance.

"A lizard takes the liberty of using what seem to be some old underpants when he runs out of toilet paper. What he doesn't count on is that his own conscience and an outraged rabbit will be watching"--