Little Mary Lennox is a bad-tempered, disagreeable child. When her parents die in India, she is sent back to England to live with her uncle in a big, lonely, old house. There is nothing to do all …
'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 late…
When a large plane is hijacked, the Prime Minister looks at the list of passengers and suddenly becomes very, very frightened. There is a name on the list that the Prime Minister knows very well - …
In Edinburgh a detective listens to a confession; in Orkney an old man lives with the ghosts of his past. In the Outer Hebrides some travellers learn a lesson; in Glasgow a young woman steals a me…
Richard Walton is in trouble again. He has lost his job, and he has borrowed money from his sister, Jennifer - again. And now he has disappeared. Jennifer is looking for him, and so are the police.…
One day, a farmer tells a farm boy to take everything out of an old building and throw it away. "It's all rubbish," he says.In the middle of all the rubbish, the boy finds a beautiful old piano. He…
In the jungle of Southern India the Seeonee Wolf- Pack has a new cub. He is not a wolf - he is Mowgli, a human child, but he knows nothing of the world of men. He lives and hunts with his brothers …
All they could hear was the wind, and the waves crashing on to the rocks. All they could see was the night. They could not see the ship, broken in two. They could not see the people holding on to t…
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 furr…
There were six of them - three Katherines, two Annes, and a Jane. One of them was the King's wife for twenty-four years, another for only a year and a half. One died, two were divorced, and two wer…
What 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 th…
Marilla 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 …
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, sleep voice, 'Who are you?' What s…
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 g…
Tripitaka, can you go to the West for me - and for Buddha?' When the holy woman Guanyin asks the young monk Tripitaka to bring holy writings back from India, he says 'yes'. But how can he travel a…
'There's going to be a storm,' Father told Fritz. 'Find your brothers and bring them to our room.' A Swiss family is going to Australia when their ship sinks in a storm. After that, Mother, Father…
Are men cleverer than women? Is a poor man cleverer than a rich man? And what about teachers? Are they always cleverer than their students? The people in these six well-known folk tales from aroun…
For thousands of years the dead body of the king Tutankhamun slept under the sands of Egypt. In the autumn of 1922, Howard Carter finds and opens his tomb door. These are exciting times, and Carter…
It's Gromit the dog's birthday, and his friend Wallace gives him an unusual present a pair of techno-trousers. At first Wallace uses the trousers to take Gromit for walks, but when the penguin com…
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 …