A Pocketful of Plays: Vintage Short Stories, Volume II contains 23 short stories that research reveals to be currently among the most commonly studied in class around the country. The works include source materials to encourage further discussion and analysis, Among these enhancement are author's comments, biographical and critical commentaries, and sections of a play and a film script for comparison of media. The reception of this series has supported the original assumption that students and teachers would welcome an innovative alternative to huge anthologies, which are rarely used entirely, tend to be too bulky to carry and to handle in class. As with the first Vintage anthology in the Pocketful series, this anthology is aimed at satisfying the need for a concise, quality collection that students will find inexpensive sand that instructors will enjoy teaching.

Save money with CENGAGE ADVANTAGE BOOKS: POCKETFUL OF PROSE: VINTAGE SHORT FICTION, VOLUME I! An inexpensive alternative to the more expensive anthologies, this slim volume contains only the essentials of the most familiar and most taught favorites. The Quick and Easy Guide for Critical Reading, located conveniently for easy access, contains questions that center your study of the works in the book and also serve as a useful guide for reading any work, in or outside of class.

Including titles in fiction, poetry, drama, and essays, David Madden's Pocketfuls series are slim volumes including only the essentials of the most familiar and most often taught works in each genre. Priced to be affordably packaged with two or even three other volumes, each book in the Pocketful series can also be used separately. This volume of essays is arranged.

A boy takes his pet cricket to school where it first disturbs the class with its chirping, but then becomes the show-and-tell attraction.

Poems and haiku verses provides glimpses of life in the city.

I am as brown as brown can be, And my eyes as black as sloe; I am as brisk as brisk can be, And wild as forest doe. (The Child Ballads, 295) So begins a beautiful tale of love, loss and revenge. Following the seasons, A Pocketful of Crows balances youth and age, wisdom and passion and draws on nature and folklore to weave a stunning modern mythology around a nameless wild girl. Only love could draw her into the world of named, tamed things. And it seems only revenge will be powerful enough to let her escape. Beautifully illustrated by Bonnie Helen Hawkins, this is a stunning and original modern fairytale.

A determined young girl joins forces with an adventure-loving street boy to save her father’s life in this “thoroughly entertaining” (Kirkus Reviews) magical murder mystery. In the spell-powered city of Tarreton, the wealthy have all the magic they desire while the working class can barely afford a simple spell to heat their homes. Twelve-year-old Isaveth is poor, but she’s also brave, loyal, and zealous in the pursuit of justice—which is lucky, because her father has just been wrongfully arrested for murder. Isaveth is determined to prove his innocence. Quiz, the eccentric, eyepatch-wearing street boy who befriends her, swears he can’t resist a good mystery. Together they set out to solve the magical murder of one of Tarreton’s most influential citizens and save Isaveth’s beloved Papa from execution. But is Quiz truly helping Isaveth out of friendship, or does he have hidden motives of his own?

In 1969 twelve-year-old Mimi and her family move to an all-white town in Vermont, where Mimi's mixed-race background and interest in "boyish" topics like astronomy make her feel like an outsider.

In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and tricks of the masters to discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humour and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart – to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; to look to John le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue and to Flannery O’ Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail; to be inspired by Emily Brontë ’ s structural nuance and Charles Dickens’ s deceptively simple narrative techniques. Most importantly, Prose cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted, and reminds us that good writing comes out of good reading.

Inhabiting an island off the coast of Maine left to her by her great-uncle Arno, Hannah finds her life as a dedicated and solitary artist rudely interrupted one summer when a dog, matted with feathers and seaweed, arrives with the tide. He is only the first of a series of unexpected visitors and is soon followed by a teenager running from an abu...