Anne of Green Gables
/ SEMMarilla Cuthbert and her brother Matthew want to adopt an orphan, to help on the farm at Green Gables. They ask for a boy, but they get Anne, who has red hair and freckles, and who talks and talks and talks. They didn’t want a girl, but how can they send a child back, like an unwanted parcel? So Anne stays, and begins a new life in the sleepy, quiet village of Avonlea in Canada. But it is not so quiet after Anne comes to live there…
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
/ SEMThe room was on the fourth floor, and the key on the inside. The windows were closed and fastened – on the inside. The chimney was too narrow for a cat to get through. So how did the murderer escape? And whose were the two angry voices heard by the neighbours as they ran up the stairs? Nobody in Paris could find any answers to this mystery.
Except Anguste Dupin, who could see further and think more clearly than other people. The answers to the mystery were all there, but only a clever man could see them.
Woman of Mystery
/ SEMWhat does the name ‘Agatha Christie’ mean? To many people, it means a book about a murder mystery – a ‘whodunnit’. ‘I’m reading an Agatha Christie,’ people say. ‘I’m not sure who the murderer is – I think it’s . . .’ But they are usually wrong, because it is not easy to guess the murderer’s name before the end of the book.
But who was Agatha Christie? What was she like? Was her life quiet and unexciting, or was it full of interest and adventure? Was there a mystery in her life, too?
Grace Darling
/ SEMAll they could hear was the wind, and the waves. All they could see was the night. They could not see the ship, broken in two, or the people holding on to the dark wet rock, slowly dying of cold. And they could not hear the cries for help – only the wind. How could a man and his daughter save the people on the rock? They only had a little wooden boat in that wild and dangerous sea. The Forfarshire was wrecked off the north-east coast of England in 1838. This is the true story of Grace Darling – a girl who became a famous heroine on that stormy night.
Cries from the Heart : Stories from Around the World
/ SEMFrom Botswana to New Zealand, from Jamaica to Nigeria, from Uganda to Malaysia, from India to South Africa, these moving stories show us that the human heart is the same in every place. Fear and pain, happiness and sadness, belong to us all. These eight stories were winning entries in the 2004 Commonwealth Short Story Competition. The writers are Sefi Atta, Adrienne M. Frater, Lauri Kubuitsile, Erica N. Robinson, Jackee Budesta Batanda, Janet Tay Hui Ching, Anuradha Muralidharan, and Tod Collins.
Red Dog
/ SEMClassics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. Red Dog was a Red Cloud kelpie, an Australian sheepdog. His life was full of excitement and adventure. He travelled all over Western Australia, and never really had an owner. But he had many, many friends, and he always knew where to go for a good meal. Louis de Bernières collected these stories about the life of a real dog in Western Australia. They are all true stories – some are funny, some are sad, but all are unforgettable. Everybody should have a friend like Red Dog.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
/ SEMA story for children by Lewis Carroll (see Dodgson), published 1865.
Originally entitled Alice’s Adventures under Ground, and written for his young friend Alice Liddell, it tells how Alice dreams she pursues a White Rabbit down a rabbit‐hole to a world where she encounters such celebrated characters as the Duchess and the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, the King and Queen of Hearts, and the Mock Turtle. It contains the poems ‘You are old, Father William’, ‘Beautiful Soup’, and others, and Carroll’s typographical experiment ‘Fury and the Mouse’, in the shape of a mouse’s tail.
Five Children & It
/ SEMWhen the children dug a hole in the gravel-pit, they were very surprised at what they found. ‘It’ was a Psammead, a sand-fairy, thousands of years old. It was a strange little thing – fat and furry, and with eyes on long stalks. It was often very cross and unfriendly, but it could give wishes – one wish a day. ‘How wonderful!’ the children said. But wishes are difficult things. They can get you into trouble . . .
As the Inspector Said and Other Stories
/ SEMThe murder plan seems so neat, so clever. How can it possibly fail? And when Sonia’s stupid, boring little husband is dead, she will be free to marry her handsome lover. But perhaps the boring little husband is not so stupid after all… Murder plans that go wrong, a burglar who makes a bad mistake, a famous jewel thief who meets a very unusual detective… These five stories from the golden age of crime writing are full of mystery and surprises.
Through the Looking-Glass
/ SEMI wish I could get through into looking-glass house,’ Alice said. ‘Let’s pretend that the glass has gone soft and… Why, I do believe it has! It’s turning into a kind of cloud!’ A moment later Alice is inside the looking-glass world. There she finds herself part of a great game of chess, travelling through forests and jumping across brooks. The chess pieces talk and argue with her, give orders and repeat poems… It is the strangest dream that anyone ever had…
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
/ SEMThere are broken hearts and kisses and then weddings, so this is a story about love. There are actors who are funny because they cannot act, so it is also a story that makes people laugh. And there are fairies, spirits of the night, so it is a story about mischief and magic too. What happens when love and laughter come together with magic in an Athenian forest? A Midsummer Night’s Dream was written in about 1596 and is one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays. It has been retold for Bookworms, not as a play, but as a story.
The Prisoner of Zenda
/ SEMIdeal for intermediate learners of English looking to improve or practise their English. The book is filled with useful vocabulary that is carefully graded and easy to understand, it also comes with audio, so that you can listen to the story at the same time as reading. ‘We must leave for Zenda at once, to find the King!’ cried Sapt. ‘If we’re caught, we’ll all be killed!’So Rudolf Rassendyll and Sapt gallop through the night to find the King of Ruritania. But the King is now a prisoner in the Castle of Zenda. Who will rescue him from his enemies, the dangerous Duke Michael and Rupert of Hentzau?And who will win the heart of the beautiful Princess Flavia?