CLASSIC FICTION (CHILDREN'S / TEENAGE). Following the initial success of The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling published the collection of parables Just So Stories. He first entertained his own children with these delightful and humorous tales before deciding to write them down for publication. The stories are written in the form of what came to be also known as pourqoui (French for "why") stories, each explaining how and why things came to be as they...

Dick Heldar, a young painter, goes to Soudan with an expedition and returns to London on the verge of blindness. He applies himself with zeal to the completion of 'Melancholia,' his masterpiece, and loses his sight and his beloved.