Oxford Bookworms Library

Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 5 Great Expectations

Charles Dickens
Retold by Clare West

STAGE 5 - Classics

In a gloomy, neglected house Miss Havisham sits, as she has sat year after year, in a wedding dress and veil that were once white, and are now faded and yellow with age. Her face is like a death's head; her dark eyes burn with bitterness and hate. By her side sits a proud and beautiful girl, and in front of her, trembling with fear in his thick country boots, stands young Pip.

Miss Havisham stares at Pip coldly, and murmurs to the girl at her side: 'Break his heart, Estella. Break his heart!'

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 5 Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen
Retold by Clare West

STAGE 5 - Classics

Sometimes the Dashwood girls do not seem like sisters. Elinor is all calmness and reason, and can be relied upon for practical, common sense opinions. Marianne, on the other hand, is all sensibility, full of passionate and romantic feeling. She has no time for dull common sense - or for middle-aged men of thirty-five, long past the age of marriage.

True love can only be felt by the young, of course. And if your heart is broken at the age of seventeen, how can you ever expect to recover from the passionate misery that fills your life, waking and sleeping?

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 5 Sense and Sensibility Audio CD Pack

Jane Austen
Retold by Clare West

STAGE 5 - Classics

Sometimes the Dashwood girls do not seem like sisters. Elinor is all calmness and reason, and can be relied upon for practical, common sense opinions. Marianne, on the other hand, is all sensibility, full of passionate and romantic feeling. She has no time for dull common sense - or for middle-aged men of thirty-five, long past the age of marriage.

True love can only be felt by the young, of course. And if your heart is broken at the age of seventeen, how can you ever expect to recover from the passionate misery that fills your life, waking and sleeping?

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 5 Wuthering Heights Audio CD Pack

Emily Brontë
Retold by Clare West

STAGE 5 - Classics

The wind is strong on the Yorkshire moors. There are few trees, and fewer houses, to block its path. There is one house, however, that does not hide from the wind. It stands out from the hill and challenges the wind to do its worst. The house is called Wuthering Heights.

When Mr Earnshaw brings a strange, small, dark child back home to Wuthering Heights, it seems he has opened his doors to trouble. He has invited in something that, like the wind, is safer kept out of the house.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 6 Barchester Towers

Anthony Trollope
Retold by Clare West

STAGE 6 - Classics

Mrs Proudie, the warlike wife of the new Bishop of Barchester, brings the Reverend Slope into the Bishop's Palace to help dominate her husband and rule the local clergy. But Slope is a snake in the grass, determined to find a rich wife, to win advancement for himself, even to fight Mrs Proudie if necessary.

Their battle becomes a furious dance, involving rich, pretty Widow Bold, angry Archdeacon Grantly, man-eating Signora Neroni, gentle Mr Harding, confused Parson Quiverful and his fourteen noisy children.

This classic comic story is Trollope's most famous novel.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 6 Jane Eyre Audio CD Pack

Charlotte Brontë
Retold by Clare West

STAGE 6 - Classics

Jane Eyre is alone in the world. Disliked by her aunt's family, she is sent away to school. Here she learns that a young girl, with neither money nor family to support her, can expect little from the world. She survives, but she wants more from life than simply to survive: she wants respect, and love. When she goes to work for Mr Rochester, she hopes she has found both at once. But the sound of strange laughter, late at night, behind a locked door, warns her that her troubles are only beginning.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 6 Oliver Twist Audio CD Pack

Charles Dickens
Retold by Richard Rogers

STAGE 6 - Classics

London in the 1830s was no place to be if you were a hungry ten-year-old boy, an orphan without friends or family, with no home to go to, and only a penny in your pocket to buy a piece of bread.

But Oliver Twist finds some friends - Fagin, the Artful Dodger, and Charley Bates. They give him food and shelter, and play games with him, but it is not until some days later that Oliver finds out what kind of friends they are and what kind of 'games' they play . . .

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 6 Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen
Retold by Clare West

STAGE 6 - Classics

'The moment I first met you, I noticed your pride, your sense of superiority, and your selfish disdain for the feelings of others. You are the last man in the world whom I could ever be persuaded to marry,' said Elizabeth Bennet.

And so Elizabeth rejects the proud Mr Darcy. Can nothing overcome her prejudice against him? And what of the other Bennet girls - their fortunes, and misfortunes, in the business of getting husbands?

This famous novel by Jane Austen is full of wise and humorous observation of the people and manners of her times.

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Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 6 Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy
Retold by Clare West

STAGE 6 - Classics

A pretty young girl has to leave home to make money for her family. She is clever and a good worker; but she is uneducated and does not know the cruel ways of the world. So, when a rich young man says he loves her, she is careful - but not careful enough. He is persuasive, and she is overwhelmed. It is not her fault, but the world says it is. Her young life is already stained by men's desires, and by death.

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