All Graded Readers

Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 3 Through the Looking-Glass Pack

Lewis Carroll
Retold by Jennifer Bassett

STAGE 3 - Classics

'I 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 . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 3 Ethan Frome

Edith Wharton
Retold by Susan Kingsley

STAGE 3 - Classics

Life is always hard for the poor, in any place and at any time. Ethan Frome is a farmer in Massachusetts. He works long hours every day, but his farm makes very little money. His wife, Zeena, is a thin, grey woman, always complaining, and only interested in her own ill health.

Then Mattie Silver, a young cousin, comes to live with the Fromes, to help Zeena and do the housework. Her bright smile and laughing voice bring light and hope into the Fromes' house - and into Ethan's lonely life.

But poverty is a prison from which few people escape . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 3 Ethan Frome Audio CD Pack

Edith Wharton
Retold by Susan Kingsley

STAGE 3 - Classics

Life is always hard for the poor, in any place and at any time. Ethan Frome is a farmer in Massachusetts. He works long hours every day, but his farm makes very little money. His wife, Zeena, is a thin, grey woman, always complaining, and only interested in her own ill health.

Then Mattie Silver, a young cousin, comes to live with the Fromes, to help Zeena and do the housework. Her bright smile and laughing voice bring light and hope into the Fromes' house - and into Ethan's lonely life.

But poverty is a prison from which few people escape . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 3 The Last Sherlock Holmes Story Audio CD Pack

Michael Dibdin
Retold by Rosalie Kerr

STAGE 3 - Crime & Mystery

For fifty years after Dr Watson's death, a packet of papers, written by the doctor himself, lay hidden in a locked box. The papers contained an extraordinary report of the case of Jack the Ripper and the horrible murders in the East End of London in 1888. The detective, of course, was the great Sherlock Holmes - but why was the report kept hidden for so long?

This is the story that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never wrote. It is a strange and frightening tale . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 3 The Railway Children Audio CD Pack

Edith Nesbit
Retold by John Escott

STAGE 3 - Human Interest

'We have to leave our house in London,' Mother said to the children. 'We're going to live in the country, in a little house near a railway line.'

And so begins a new life for Roberta, Peter, and Phyllis. They become the railway children - they know all the trains, Perks the station porter is their best friend, and they have many adventures on the railway line.

But why has their father had to go away? Where is he, and will he ever come back?

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 3 The Three Strangers and Other Stories

Thomas Hardy
Retold by Clare West

STAGE 3 - Classics

On a stormy winter night, a stranger knocks at the door of a shepherd's cottage. He is cold and hungry, and wants to get out of the rain. He is welcomed inside, but he does not give his name or his business. Who is he, and where has he come from? And he is only the first visitor to call at the cottage that night . . .

In these three short stories, Thomas Hardy gives us pictures of the lives of shepherds and hangmen, dukes and teachers. But rich or poor, young or old, they all have the same feelings of fear, hope, love, jealousy . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 3 The Wind in the Willows

Kenneth Grahame
Retold by Jennifer Bassett

STAGE 3 - Classics

Down by the river bank, where the wind whispers through the willow trees, is a very pleasant place to have a lunch party with a few friends. But life is not always so peaceful for the Mole and the Water Rat. There is the time, for example, when Toad gets interested in motor-cars - goes mad about them in fact . . .

The story of the adventures of Mole, Rat, Badger, and Toad has been loved by young and old for over a hundred years.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 2 Tales from Longpuddle Audio CD Pack

Thomas Hardy
Retold by Jennifer Bassett

STAGE 2 - Classics

Tony Kytes is a favourite with the girls but he's not terribly clever. If you meet an old girlfriend and she asks for a ride home in your wagon, do you say yes? And then if you meet the girl you are planning to marry, what do you do? Very soon, Tony is in a great muddle, and does not know how to escape from it.

These stories are set in an English country village of the nineteenth century, but Hardy's tales of mistakes and muddles and marriages belong in any place, at any time.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 2 The Importance of Being Earnest Audio CD Pack

Oscar Wilde
Retold by Susan Kingsley

STAGE 2 - Playscripts

This famous play by Oscar Wilde is one of the finest comedies in the English language.

Algernon knows that his friend Jack does not always tell the truth. For example, in town his name is Ernest, while in the country he calls himself Jack. And who is the girl who gives him presents 'from little Cecily, with all her love'?

But when the beautiful Gwendolen Fairfax says that she can only love a man whose name is Ernest, Jack decides to change his name, and become Ernest forever. Then Cecily agrees to marry Algernon, but only if his name is Ernest, too, and things become a little difficult for the two young men.

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