Well, Yusuf, are you sure that you want to be a soldier?' 'I'll do my best, Uncle.' When Yusuf went to Aleppo to learn to fight under General Shirkuh, no one knew what this young man would do with his life. But years later, Yusuf became the great and chivalrous general, Saladin - the man who helped to bring Muslims together to win back the holy city of Jerusalem from the Franks. This is his story...
Why shouldn't we offer to take care of her? She could live with us at Mansfield.' In this way Mrs Norris persuades her sister, Lady Bertram, and Lady Bertram's husband, Sir Thomas, to ask their poor niece Fanny Price to live with them at Mansfield Park. At first Fanny is unhappy there. Then, after she makes friends with her young cousins, things improve. But what happens when the cousins are older, and starting to think of love?
We have some wonderful mosaics in Pompeii, but I've never seen a better one than this!' After the young Roman mosaic designer Felix starts work in Pompeii, his whole life changes. There he falls in love with the beautiful Greek slave Agathe, who can see into the future. When the volcano Vesuvius sends hot ash over the city, Felix - and Agathe's brother Alcander - ride to the port of Misenum for help. But will they reach admiral Gaius Plinius in time, and will they ever see Agathe alive again?
In the first of these stories, Rip van Winkle sleeps for over twenty years, and then wakes up to a world that he no longer understands. In the other story, Ichabod Crane, the school teacher, meets a headless rider in the middle of a dark night. These two classic tales of the supernatural by Washington Irving have been popular for nearly two hundred years
