Mark Twain’s best known novels center around the boys Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. But he in fact wrote numerous other novels, as well as short stories, essays, and travel stories. One of his better-known novels is “Pudd’nhead Wilson.”

My sister holds a special position in our family. She is the youngest of four children -- and all the others are boys. So sometimes when she entered the room my father would say, “Well, well, well. If it isn’t the Queen of Sheba!” What did he mean by that?

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote “The Great Stone Face” in 1850 after visiting “The Old Man of the Mountain,” a genuine geological feature in the state of New Hampshire. Sadly, the figure collapsed in 2003.