All Graded Readers

Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 5 Heat and Dust

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Retold by Clare West

STAGE 5 - Human Interest

Heat and dust - these simple, terrible words describe the Indian summer. Year after year, endlessly, it is the same. And everyone who experiences this heat and dust is changed for ever.

We often say, in these modern times, that sexual relationships have changed, for better or for worse. But in this book we see that things have not changed. Whether we look back sixty years, or a hundred and sixty, we see that it is not things that change, but people. And, in the heat and dust of an Indian summer, even people are not very different after all.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 5 The Riddle of the Sands

Erskine Childers
Retold by Peter Hawkins

STAGE 5 - Thriller & Adventure

When Carruthers joins his friend Arthur Davies on his yacht Dulcibella, he is expecting a pleasant sailing holiday in the Baltic Sea. But the holiday turns into an adventure of a different kind. He and Davies soon find themselves sailing in the stormy waters of the North Sea, exploring the channels and sandbanks around the German Frisian Islands, and looking for a secret - a secret that could mean great danger for England.

Erskine Childers' novel, published in 1903, was the first great modern spy story, and is still as exciting to read today as it was a hundred years ago.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 5 Treading on Dreams: Stories from Ireland

Retold by Clare West

STAGE 5 - World Stories

'At home we started with an innocent life. Walking home from village dances across pale wet fields, looking at birds on the moonlit lake, playing a tune across the water in the early morning with no other sound in the clear cold air.'

Innocence and experience, loss and longing, humour and sadness run hand in hand through these stories.

The stories in this volume of World Stories are by Irish writers Brian Friel, Edna O'Brien, William Trevor, Lorcan Byrne, Frank O'Connor, Claire Keegan, Eamonn Sweeney, and Somerville & Ross.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 1 Animals in Danger Audio CD Pack

Andy Hopkins and Joc Potter

STAGE 1 - Factfiles

People love and need animals. They keep them in their homes and on their farms. They enjoy going to zoos, and watching animals on films and on TV. Little children love to play with toy animals.

But people are a great danger to animals too. They take their land, and cut down the trees where animals have their homes. They pollute the rivers and seas, and kill big animals for their skins or for medicine. Now there are about 7,000 species of animals in danger. What can we do to protect the animals of the world - from us?

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 2 Rainforests Audio CD Pack

Rowena Akinyemi

STAGE 2 - Factfiles

Deep rivers, tall trees, strange animals, beautiful flowers - this is the rainforest. Burning trees, thick smoke, new roads and cities, dead animals, people without homes - this is the rainforest too. To some people the rainforests mean beautiful places that you can visit; to others they mean trees that they can cut down and sell.

Between 1950 and 2000 half of the world's rainforests disappeared. While you read these words, somewhere in the world people are cutting down rainforest trees. What are these wonderful places that we call rainforests - and is it too late to save them?

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 3 On the Edge

Gillian Cross
Retold by Clare West

STAGE 3 - Thriller & Adventure

When Tug wakes up, he is not in his own bedroom at home. The door is locked and there are bars across the window. Loud music hammers through the house and through his head. Then a woman comes in and says that she is his mother, but Tug knows that she is not his mother . . .

Outside, Jinny stares through the trees at the lonely house on the hill. She hears strange noises, but she turns away. After all, it's none of her business . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 4 Desert, Mountain, Sea

Sue Leather

STAGE 4 - True Stories

Three different parts of the world, but all of them dangerous, lonely places. Three different women, but all of them determined to go - and to come back alive!

Robyn Davidson walked nearly 3,000 kilometres across the Australian desert - with a dog and four camels.

Arlene Blum led a team of ten women to the top of Annapurna - one of the highest mountains in the world. Only eight came down again.

Naomi James sailed around the world alone, on a journey lasting more than 250 days.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 5 Jeeves and Friends - Short Stories

P.G. Wodehouse
Retold by Clare West

STAGE 5 - Human Interest

What on earth would Bertie Wooster do without Jeeves, his valet? Jeeves is calm, tactful, resourceful, and has the answer to every problem. Bertie, a pleasant young man but a bit short of brains, turns to Jeeves every time he gets into trouble. And Bertie is always in trouble.

These six stories include the most famous of P. G. Wodehouse's memorable characters. There are three stories about Bertie and Jeeves, and three about Lord Emsworth, who, like Bertie, is often in trouble, battling with his fierce sister Lady Constance, and his even fiercer Scottish gardener, the red-bearded Angus McAllister . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 6 Decline and Fall

Evelyn Waugh
Retold by Clare West

STAGE 6 - Human Interest

After a wild, drunken party, Paul Pennyfeather is forced to leave Oxford and begin a new life out in the wide world. His experiences take him from a boys' private school in Wales, where he meets some rather strange people, to a life of luxury in a grand country house and the Ritz Hotel, and then to seven years' hard labour in prison. Where will it all end?

The black humour of this story about English society in the 1920s is as fresh today as it was when the novel was first written.

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