All Graded Readers

Dominoes Two V is for Vampire

New

Lesley Thompson

'He's great, Vera,' said Angie.

When Viktor Sarav takes a job at Ballantine's, Angie and her brother Don - the young owners of the New York fashion company - are pleased. But Angie and Don's parents died in an unusual plane accident, and other strange deaths in the company follow. Is there a vampire at work at Ballantine's? Vera Donato, a company director with secrets to hide, is against Viktor. But Ed Valdemar, the company lawyer, trusts him. Who is right? And what happens to Viktor, Angie, Don, and Vera in the end?

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Dominoes Quick Starter Zombie Attack!

New

Lesley Thompson

'Professor Clark's work usually helps people. But this is something new.'

Clark's helper - Tasha Kiara - is telling Chaz - a local TV reporter about the Professor's new serum.

Then an earthquake hits Clark's California lab, and his serum brings dead bodies in the cemetery alive. Soon the zombies attack!

What happens to Professor Clark? How can Tasha and Chaz stop the zombies? Who lives and who dies? Read this story and see.

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Dominoes One Frankenstein

New

'My name is Victor Frankenstein.'

On a ship in the Arctic, Victor Frankenstein - ill and tired - tells the story of his sad life to the British man of science, Robert Walton. He talks of his family and friends in Geneva, and of his love for beautiful Elizabeth Lavenza.

He speaks, too, about the terrible creature that he made from dead body parts when he was a university science student. He hates this monster, which has destroyed his life. But how does the monster feel about its maker?

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Dominoes Quick Starter The Sorcerer's Apprentice

New

Retold by Bill Bowler

'What's your job?' Yukio asks.

'I'm a sorcerer,' the old man smiles, 'and I need a young apprentice.'

One day, Yukio - a young boy from old Japan - leaves his sister in the country and looks for a job in the town. He finds interesting work there, as a sorcerer's apprentice. But why must Yukio wait to learn magic? And what happens after he puts a spell on a broom when the sorcerer is away?

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 3 Future Energy

New

Right now, all over the world, people are using energy. As we drive our cars, work on our computers, or even cook food on a wood fire, we probably do not stop to think about where the energy comes from. But when the gas is gone and there is no more coal - what then?

Scientists are finding new answers all the time. Get ready for the children whose running feet make the energy to bring water to their village; for the power station that uses warm and cold water to make energy; for the car that saves energy by growing like a plant ...

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Dominoes Two The Lost World

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Text adaptation by Susan Kingsley

'You said that you wanted danger, didn't you?' says McArdle, the editor of the Daily Gazette. And he sends his young reporter, Malone, on a strange journey into South America with the famous Professor Challenger.

Challenger believes he can find a lost world full of dinosaurs in the middle of the Amazon forest. But this world is dangerous to reach, and, once the Professor and his small group of explorers arrive, things get even more dangerous for them.

Will they return alive?

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Dominoes Two The Turn of the Screw

Henry James
Text adaptation by Christine Lindop

A young woman arrives at a large country house. Her job is to look after the two children who live there, but she soon discovers that there is something very strange about both the house and the children. The longer she stays, the more she feels that the two children are in danger - or is it that the children are the danger, and the person in danger is herself?

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Dominoes One The Curse of the Mummy

Joyce Hannam

For thousands of years the dead body of the young king Tutankhamun slept under the sands of Egypt. Then, in the autumn of 1922, Howard Carter and his friends find and open his tomb door. These are exciting times, and Carter's young helper Tariq tells the story in his diary.

But soon people begin to die. Who or what is the killer? Is Tutankhamun angry with them for opening his tomb? And who is the beautiful French girl with the face of Tutankhamun's long-dead wife?

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Dominoes Three The Faithful Ghost and Other Tall Tales

Selected by Bill Bowler
Text adaptation By Bill Bowler

A 'Tall Tale' is a story that's hard to believe, and the five tall tales in this book all tell of ghosts. Some have dark secrets buried in the past, others bring messages for the living. Some are laughable, some are sad, and some are just evil.

Sometimes there's a logical explanation for the strangest happenings, but often things cannot be explained by logic alone. Either way, you're sure to find some frightening reading between the covers of this book.

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Dominoes One The Real McCoy & Other Ghost Stories

Lesley Thompson

'Are you scared, Gordon?' asks Heather.

Four friends talk of ghosts in a hotel in Scotland. That night Gordon sees and hears something strange in his room. But is it really the ghost of Lord McCoy?

These six stories tell of ghosts - friendly, sad, and bad - from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, America - and Egypt!

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 5 Bestseller Pack

Pack contains one copy of each of the following eight titles:

Brat Farrar
David Copperfield
Deadlock
Far from the Madding Crowd
Ghost Stories
Great Expectations
Sense and Sensibility
Wuthering Heights

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 3 As the Inspector Said and Other Stories

Retold by John Escott

STAGE 3 - Crime & Mystery

The 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.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 4 The Unquiet Grave - Short Stories

M.R. James
Retold by Peter Hawkins

STAGE 4 - Fantasy & Horror

If you find a locked room in a lonely inn, don't try to open it, even on a bright sunny day. If you find a strange whistle hidden among the stones of an old church, don't blow it. If a mysterious man gives you a piece of paper with strange writing on it, give it back to him at once. And if you call a dead man from his grave, don't expect to sleep peacefully ever again.

Read these five ghost stories by daylight, and make sure your door is locked.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 3 Moondial

Helen Cresswell
Retold by John Escott

STAGE 3 - Fantasy & Horror

'Moondial!' As Minty spoke the word, a cold wind went past her, and her ears were filled with a thousand frightened voices. She shut her eyes and put her hands over her ears - and the voices and the wind went away. Minty opened her eyes . . . and knew that she was in a different morning, not the one she had woken up to.

And so Minty's strange adventure begins - a journey through time into the past, where she finds Tom, and Sarah . . . and the evil Miss Vole.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 3 The Star Zoo

Harry Gilbert

STAGE 3 - Fantasy & Horror

In our world today a hummingbird is a small, brilliantly coloured bird that lives in the tall trees of tropical forests.

In the far distant future, Hummingbird (Hummy for short) is a girl of sixteen who lives somewhere in the Galaxy, on a planet called Just Like Home. She has the name 'Hummingbird' in big letters on all her clothes, but she has never seen a real hummingbird. She has never seen any living animal or bird at all. The Book of Remembering says that there were once many animals on a planet called Earth, but that was before the Burning, a long, long time ago . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 4 The Whispering Knights

Penelope Lively
Retold by Clare West

STAGE 4 - Fantasy & Horror

'I don't know that you have done anything wrong,' Miss Hepplewhite said. 'But it is possible that you have done something rather dangerous.'

William and Susie thought they were just playing a game when they cooked a witch's brew in the old barn and said a spell over it, but Martha was not so sure. And indeed, the three friends soon learn that they have called up something dark and evil out of the distant past . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 6 Meteor and Other Stories

John Wyndham
Retold by Patrick Nobes

STAGE 6 - Fantasy & Horror

It was just a smooth round metal ball, less than a metre in diameter. Although it was still hot from its journey through the huge nothingness of space, it looked quite harmless. But what was it, exactly? A meteor, perhaps - just one of those pieces of rock from outer space that occasionally fall down on to the planet Earth. But meteors don't usually make strange hissing sounds . . .

In this collection of four of his famous science-fiction stories, John Wyndham creates visions of the future that make us think carefully about the way we live now.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 4 The Songs of Distant Earth and Other Stories

Arthur C. Clarke
Retold by Jennifer Bassett

STAGE 4 - Fantasy & Horror

'High above them, Lora and Clyde heard a sound their world had not heard for centuries - the thin scream of a starship coming in from outer space, leaving a long white tail like smoke across the clear blue sky. They looked at each other in wonder. After three hundred years of silence, Earth had reached out once more to touch Thalassa . . .'

And with the starship comes knowledge, and love, and pain.

In these five science-fiction stories Arthur C. Clarke takes us travelling through the universe into the unknown, but always possible future.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 2 The Year of Sharing

Harry Gilbert

STAGE 2 - Fantasy & Horror

Richard is bored with the quiet life of his village. He would like to have a motor-car and drive it . . . very fast. But Richard lives in a future world where there are no cars, only bicycles and small villages and green forests.

And now he is twelve years old, and like the other children, he must do his Year of Sharing. He must live alone in the forest with the wild animals. He must learn to share his world; he must learn how animals live and eat and fight . . . and die.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 2 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll
Retold by Jennifer Bassett

STAGE 2 - Classics

There, on top of the mushroom, was a large caterpillar, smoking a pipe. After a while the Caterpillar took the pipe out of its mouth and said to Alice in a slow, sleepy voice, 'Who are you?'

What strange things happen when Alice falls down the rabbit-hole and into Wonderland! She has conversations with the Caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat, goes to the Mad Hatter's tea party, plays croquet with the King and Queen of Hearts . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 2 Five Children and It

Edith Nesbit
Retold by Diane Mowat

STAGE 2 - Fantasy & Horror

When 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 . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 2 Return to Earth

John Christopher
Retold by Susan Binder

STAGE 2 - Fantasy & Horror

As they walk through a park in the distant future, Harl and Ellen talk about their work and their lives. But they will never have a life together because their work as scientists is more important to them than their love. Harl plans to leave Earth, on a long and dangerous journey through space. Ellen plans to stay on Earth, to change the way the human mind works.

When Harl returns to Earth, Ellen will be long dead . . . and the world will be a very different place.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 2 The Mystery of Allegra

Peter Foreman

STAGE 2 - Fantasy & Horror

Allegra is an unusual name. It means 'happy' in Italian, but the little girl in this story is sometimes very sad. She is only five years old, but she tells Adrian, her new friend, that she is going to die soon. How does she know?

And who is the other Allegra? The girl in a long white nightdress, who has golden hair and big blue eyes. The girl who comes only at night, and whose hands and face are cold, so cold . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 2 The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories

Edgar Allan Poe
Retold by John Escott

STAGE 2 - Fantasy & Horror

Everybody has bad dreams. Horrible things move towards you in the dark, things you can hear but not see. Then you wake up, in your own warm bed, and turn over to go back to sleep.

But imagine that you wake up on a hard floor, in a darkness blacker than the blackest night. You listen to the silence, and smell a wet dead smell. Death is all around you, waiting . . .

In these stories by Edgar Allan Poe, death whispers at you from every dark corner, and fear can send you mad . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Starter Bestseller Pack

Pack contains one copy of each of the following ten titles:

Girl on a Motorcycle
New York Café
Drive into Danger
The Fifteenth Character
Mystery in London
Sally's Phone
Escape
Taxi of Terror
Robin Hood
Survive!

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 3 Bestseller Pack

Pack contains one copy of each of the following ten titles:

The Call of the Wild
Chemical Secret
A Christmas Carol
Frankenstein
Love Story
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Prisoner of Zenda
The Secret Garden
Skyjack!
Tales of Mystery and Imagination

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 1 Under the Moon

Rowena Akinyemi

STAGE 1 - Fantasy & Horror

It is the year 2522, and the planet Earth is dying. The Artificial Ozone Layer is only 300 years old, but it is breaking up fast. Now the sun is burning down on Earth. There is no water. Without water, nothing can live. Trees die, plants die, animals die, people die . . .

In a colony under the moon, people wait for news - news from home, news from the planet Earth. And in a spaceship high above Earth, a young man watches numbers on a computer screen. The numbers tell a story, and the young man is afraid.

The planet Earth is burning, burning, burning . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 2 Voodoo Island

Michael Duckworth

STAGE 2 - Fantasy & Horror

Mr James Conway wants to make money. He wants to build new houses and shops - and he wants to build them on an old graveyard, on the island of Haiti.

There is only one old man who still visits the graveyard; and Mr Conway is not afraid of one old man.

But the old man has friends - friends in the graveyard, friends who lie dead, under the ground. And when Mr Conway starts to build his houses, he makes the terrible mistake of disturbing the sleep of the dead . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 5 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Philip K. Dick
Retold by A. Hopkins and J. Potter

STAGE 5 - Fantasy & Horror

San Francisco lies under a cloud of radioactive dust. People live in half-deserted apartment buildings, and keep electric animals as pets because so many real animals have died. Most people emigrate to Mars - unless they have a job to do on Earth.

Like Rick Deckard - android killer for the police and owner of an electric sheep. This week he has to find, identify, and kill six androids which have escaped from Mars. They're machines, but they look and sound and think like humans - clever, dangerous humans. They will be hard to kill.

The film Blade Runner was based on this famous novel.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 5 Ghost Stories

Retold by Rosemary Border

STAGE 5 - Fantasy & Horror

After dinner we turned the lights out and played 'hide-and-seek'. In the dark, I touched a hand, a very cold hand. Now, because of the game, I had to hide in the dark with . . . with this cold person - not speaking, not knowing who it was. Slowly the others found us, hid with us, until we were all there - all thirteen. Thirteen? But there were only twelve people in the house!

We touched each other in the dark, counting. Thirteen. Quickly, nervously, I lit a match to see . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 5 I, Robot - Short Stories

Isaac Asimov
Retold by Rowena Akinyemi

STAGE 5 - Fantasy & Horror

A human being is a soft, weak creature. It needs constant supplies of air, water, and food; it has to spend a third of its life asleep, and it can't work if the temperature is too hot or too cold.

But a robot is made of strong metal. It uses electrical energy directly, never sleeps, and can work in any temperature. It is stronger, more efficient - and sometimes more human than human beings.

Isaac Asimov was one of the greatest science-fiction writers, and these short stories give us an unforgettable and terrifying vision of the future.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Starter New York Café

Michael Dean

STARTER - Fantasy & Horror

It is the year 2030, and an email message arrives at New York Café: 'I want to help people and make them happy!'

But not everybody is happy about the email, and soon the police and the President are very interested in the New York Café.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 4 Bestseller Pack

Pack contains one copy of each of the following ten titles:

Black Beauty
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Gulliver's Travels
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Little Women
Silas Marner
A Tale of Two Cities
The Thirty-Nine Steps
Three Men in a Boat
Treasure Island

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 1 Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp

Retold by Judith Dean

STAGE 1 - Fantasy & Horror

In a city in Arabia there lives a boy called Aladdin. He is poor and often hungry, but one day he finds an old lamp. When he rubs the lamp, smoke comes out of it, and then out of the smoke comes a magical jinnee.

With the jinnee's help, Aladdin is soon rich, with gold and jewels and many fine things. But can he win the love of the Sultan's daughter, the beautiful Princess Badr-al-Budur?

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 1 The Omega Files - Short Stories

Jennifer Bassett

STAGE 1 - Fantasy & Horror

In EDI (the European Department of Intelligence in Brussels) there are some very secret files - the Omega Files. There are strange, surprising, and sometimes horrible stories in these files, but not many people know about them. You never read about them in the newspapers.

Hawker and Jude know all about the Omega Files, because they work for EDI. They think fast, they move fast, and they learn some very strange things. They go all over the world, asking difficult questions in dangerous places, but they don't always find the answers . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 6 The Fly and Other Horror Stories

Retold by John Escott

STAGE 6 - Fantasy & Horror

Flies are a nuisance. They are annoying when they buzz around you, but you can brush them away with your hand. After all, a fly is only about half the size of your fingernail. But suppose it wasn't. Catch a fly and look at it closely - look at its head, its eyes, its legs. Now imagine that this thing was the size of a human being . . .

These eight stories offer horror in many shapes and forms, in worlds full of monsters and evil spirits, where terror lies waiting in the shadows, and where the living and the dead dance hand in hand.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Starter Starman

Phillip Burrows and Mark Foster

STARTER - Fantasy & Horror

The empty centre of Australia. The sun is hot and there are not many people. And when Bill meets a man, alone, standing on an empty road a long way from anywhere, he is surprised and worried.

And Bill is right to be worried. Because there is something strange about the man he meets. Very strange . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Starter Vampire Killer

Paul Shipton

STARTER - Fantasy & Horror

'I am a vampire killer . . . and now I need help,' says Professor Fletcher to Colin. Colin needs a job and he needs money - but do vampires exist or is the professor crazy?

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 2 Bestseller Pack

Pack contains one copy of each of the following ten titles:

Anne of Green Gables
The Canterville Ghost
The Death of Karen Silkwood
Dracula
Henry VIII and his Six Wives
Huckleberry Finn
New Yorkers
The Piano
Robinson Crusoe
Sherlock Holmes Short Stories

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 4 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson
Retold by Rosemary Border

STAGE 4 - Fantasy & Horror

You are walking through the streets of London. It is getting dark and you want to get home quickly. You enter a narrow side-street. Everything is quiet, but as you pass the door of a large, windowless building, you hear a key turning in the lock. A man comes out and looks at you. You have never seen him before, but you realize immediately that he hates you. You are shocked to discover, also, that you hate him.

Who is this man that everybody hates? And why is he coming out of the laboratory of the very respectable Dr Jekyll?

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 1 The Monkey's Paw

W. W. Jacobs
Retold by Diane Mowat

STAGE 1 - Fantasy & Horror

Outside, the night is cold and wet. Inside, the White family sits and waits. Where is their visitor?

There is a knock at the door. A man is standing outside in the dark. Their visitor has arrived.

The visitor waits. He has been in India for many years. What has he got? He has brought the hand of a small, dead animal - a monkey's paw.

Outside, in the dark, the visitor smiles and waits for the door to open.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 1 The Phantom of the Opera

Jennifer Bassett

STAGE 1 - Fantasy & Horror

It is 1880, in the Opera House in Paris. Everybody is talking about the Phantom of the Opera, the ghost that lives somewhere under the Opera House. The Phantom is a man in black clothes. He is a body without a head, he is a head without a body. He has a yellow face, he has no nose, he has black holes for eyes. Everybody is afraid of the Phantom - the singers, the dancers, the directors, the stage workers . . .

But who has actually seen him?

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 1 The Wizard of Oz

L. Frank Baum
Retold by Rosemary Border

STAGE 1 - Fantasy & Horror

Dorothy lives in Kansas, USA, but one day a cyclone blows her and her house to a strange country called Oz. There, Dorothy makes friends with the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion.

But she wants to go home to Kansas. Only one person can help her, and that is the country's famous Wizard. So Dorothy and her friends take the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, to find the Wizard of Oz . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 2 The Canterville Ghost

Oscar Wilde
Retold by John Escott

STAGE 2 - Fantasy & Horror

There has been a ghost in the house for three hundred years, and Lord Canterville's family have had enough of it. So Lord Canterville sells his grand old house to an American family. Mr Hiram B. Otis is happy to buy the house and the ghost - because of course Americans don't believe in ghosts.

The Canterville ghost has great plans to frighten the life out of the Otis family. But Americans don't frighten easily - especially not two noisy little boys - and the poor ghost has a few surprises waiting for him.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 3 A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens
Retold by Clare West

STAGE 3 - Classics

Christmas is humbug, Scrooge says - just a time when you find yourself a year older and not a penny richer. The only thing that matters to Scrooge is business, and making money.

But on Christmas Eve three spirits come to visit him. They take him travelling on the wings of the night to see the shadows of Christmas past, present, and future - and Scrooge learns a lesson that he will never forget.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 3 Frankenstein

Mary Shelley

STAGE 3 - Fantasy & Horror

Victor Frankenstein thinks he has found the secret of life. He takes parts from dead people and builds a new 'man'. But this monster is so big and frightening that everyone runs away from him - even Frankenstein himself!

The monster is like an enormous baby who needs love. But nobody gives him love, and soon he learns to hate. And, because he is so strong, the next thing he learns is how to kill . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 3 Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Edgar Allan Poe

STAGE 3 - Fantasy & Horror

The human mind is a dark, bottomless pit, and sometimes it works in strange and frightening ways. That sound in the night . . . is it a door banging in the wind, or a murdered man knocking inside his coffin? The face in the mirror . . . is it yours, or the face of someone standing behind you, who is never there when you turn round?

These famous short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, that master of horror, explore the dark world of the imagination, where the dead live and speak, where fear lies in every shadow of the mind . . .

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