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 …
Jamie and Taymour overhear this strange conversation near their homes in Muscat. Two men want to kill an important visitor, it seems. But who is the woman in danger? And what can the boys do to sav…
A man from the British royal family leaves an expensive gold and emerald crown at Holder and Stevenson's - one of the best banks in London. When someone tries to take the crown from Mr Holder's des…
When Pollyanna's farther dies, she goes to live with her Aunt, Miss Polly Harrington. Miss Harrington likes doing good, but she doesn't like children very much! Pollyanna always tries to find the …
Anna is a new student at Oxford University. When she arrives in Oxford, she meets Selim, and they become good friends. But Selim is not English, and living in a different country is not easy for hi…
Amy and Matt are bored. They don't want to study for their exams - they want to have a good time. So they drive to the marina at West Palm Beach, and Matt jumps onto one of the boats. 'We can go an…
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 bo…
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 no…
Tom Walsh had a lot to learn about life. He liked travelling, and he was in no hurry. He liked meeting people, anyone and everyone. He liked the two Americans girls on the train. They were nice and…
In the summer of 1910, a race begun. A race to be the first man at the South Pole, in Antarctica. Robert Falcon Scott, an Englishman, left London in his ship, the Terra Nova, and began the long jou…
When he was a boy, he was poor and hungry. When he was young man, he was still poor and still hungry. He learnt how to steal horses, he learnt how to fight, he learnt how to live - outside the law.…