Full catalogue

In a small village in the Hudson Valley, people say that a headless horseman gallops along the roads at night. Ichabod Crane, a thin and very superstitious schoolmaster, courts the daughter of a rich local farmer, under the eye of a rival far brawnier than he is. Both funny and eerie, this short tale is one of America's most famous ghost stories, perfect for an autumn evening. You can read it in one sitting in the language you are learning.

Sorting through the papers of his great-uncle, who died suddenly, a man discovers strange notes, accounts of nightmares and a monstrous statuette. He gathers testimony from the four corners of the world, and follows the trail of a very ancient cult devoted to Cthulhu, a creature asleep at the bottom of the ocean. In this short tale, fear comes not from a monster you see, but from everything you sense. It is this story that created the Cthulhu myth, taken up since in games and novels. You can read it in one sitting in the language you are learning.

In London, the lawyer Mr Utterson is worried about his old friend Dr Jekyll, a respected physician. In his will, Jekyll leaves everything he owns to a certain Mr Hyde, a brutal man whom everyone fears. Utterson investigates to understand what binds these two men. This short novel is about the dark side everyone carries within, and leads to one of the most famous revelations in literature. Its fast pace makes it an ideal classic to read in the language you are learning.

Victor Frankenstein, a young man from Geneva with a passion for science, succeeds in giving life to a being made of dead matter. Horrified by what he has created, he flees, and the creature, abandoned, has to find its own way in a world whose people reject it. This is the novel that gave birth to the most famous of all monsters. It asks a question that is still with us: what responsibility do we have towards what we create? A great novel to discover in the language you are learning, with the translation always in view.

An American family buys an old English castle, haunted for three centuries by the ghost of Sir Simon. But the newcomers are afraid of nothing: they scrub away the bloodstain he makes reappear every night, and offer him oil for his noisy chains. A ghost story turned upside down, in which it is the ghost who ends up terrified, full of humour and, little by little, of tenderness. You can read this short story by Oscar Wilde in one sitting in the language you are learning.

In Providence, in the United States, an old abandoned house has a sinister reputation: for more than a century, the people who have lived there have fallen ill and died one after another. The narrator and his uncle, an old doctor, search the town's archives. Then they decide to spend the night in the cellar, where a strange mould traces a human shape on the floor. Lovecraft set this short tale in a real street of his home town, and the fear grows little by little, from what you sense more than from what you see. You can read it in one sitting in the language you are learning.

An old legend says that a monstrous hound haunts the Baskerville family on the Devon moor. One evening, Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead, his face frozen in terror. Near him are the footprints of a gigantic hound. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are called in to protect his heir. It is Sherlock Holmes's most famous case, amid fog, bogs and fear of the supernatural. Full of suspense, it is easy to read in the language you are learning.

A young woman, worn out after the birth of her baby, is taken by her husband, a doctor, to an old house rented for the summer. She is forbidden to write or work, and she spends her days in a room covered in hideous yellow wallpaper. She keeps a secret diary, and comes to believe that a figure is moving behind the pattern on the wall. Charlotte Perkins Gilman had been through such a rest cure herself, and this short story creates an unease that grows with every page. You can read it in one sitting in the language you are learning.

In 1930, a scientific expedition sets out to explore Antarctica. Beyond mountains higher than the Himalayas, two men fly over a vast stone city, abandoned for millions of years. On its walls, carvings tell the story of its builders, who came from the stars long before mankind. The narrator is writing to stop a new expedition from leaving, and one question drives the whole story: what did they see out there? With the translation always in front of you, you can follow this expedition in the language you are learning.

On Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge, an old miser who hates the festive season, is visited by the ghost of his former partner, chained for all eternity. Then three spirits come for him, one after another, to show him his past, his present and his future. Dickens turns a ghost story into a warm fable about generosity and the possibility of change. This tale did a great deal to shape the spirit of Christmas as we still celebrate it today. Full of life and humour, this short tale is easy to read in the language you are learning, and ideal for a winter's evening.

In Paris, a ghost haunts the Opera: he demands that Box Five be kept for him and threatens the managers by letter. Christine Daaé, a young Swedish singer, secretly takes lessons from a mysterious voice she calls the Angel of Music. Her childhood friend, the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny, wants to find out who is behind this voice. A chandelier that falls in the middle of a performance, a mask, tunnels under the stage: Gaston Leroux created a character famous all over the world, both frightening and touching. Told like an investigation and full of suspense, the novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

A forbidden play is circulating under the title “The King in Yellow”. The first act seems innocent, but whoever reads the second falls into madness. In this collection of stories, a man believes he is destined to rule America, a sculptor discovers a liquid that turns living things into marble, and a painter is haunted by the watchman of a nearby church. Here we discover Carcosa and the Yellow Sign, mysteries that fascinated H. P. Lovecraft and many writers after him. The fear comes from what is never quite said. The stories can be read one by one, at your own pace, in the language you are learning.

A young governess goes to look after two children, Miles and Flora, in an isolated manor house in the English countryside. The children are charming, almost too charming. Soon she glimpses, on a tower and then near a pond, two figures who should not be there. Real ghosts, or the governess's madness? Henry James leaves the question open to the very last line, and it is this doubt that makes the tale one of the most famous ghost stories. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this classic in the language you are learning.

Catherine Morland, seventeen and a clergyman's daughter, adores Gothic novels. On a visit to Bath, the town of balls and spa waters, she makes friends with the charming Isabella Thorpe and with Henry Tilney, a young clergyman full of humour. When Henry's father invites her to his old abbey of Northanger, Catherine thinks she is living one of her novels: a stormy night, papers hidden in an old cabinet, the mysterious death of Mrs Tilney. Jane Austen gently mocks the fashionable novels of her day, and everything the imagination can invent. Its humour and lively dialogue make it a delightful read in the language you are learning.

In the autumn of 1918, the Heredith family are entertaining guests in their old moated manor house in Sussex. During dinner, a scream and then a shot ring out upstairs. In her room they find Violet, the young wife of the son of the house, shot dead. There is no weapon and no trace, and the open window is six metres above the ground. A Scotland Yard detective, then a famous private investigator, try to work out how the killer got in and out. A true English country-house puzzle, carefully built right up to the last page. Full of suspense, this detective novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

Jonathan Harker, a young solicitor, travels to Transylvania to complete the sale of a property near London to Count Dracula. In the isolated castle, he notices that his host never eats, never appears by day and has no reflection in the mirror. Soon Jonathan realises that he is a prisoner. This is the novel that created the most famous of all vampires, and fixed his image for ever: the castle, the night, the fangs and the fear that lurks. Told through diaries and letters, it reads like a thriller in the language you are learning.

In the Spain of old legends, a hunter finds a woman with green eyes beside a hidden spring. A young poet runs through the night after an unknown woman who may be nothing but a moonbeam. Elsewhere, a blind organist plays music that lives on after death. This collection brings together six of these tales, somewhere between dream and shiver. Bécquer, a great poet of Spanish Romanticism, tells them as if by the fireside, in a simple, musical style. Each tale is short and can be read in one sitting in the language you are learning.

In his laboratory, Dr Raymond operates on the brain of a young girl, Mary, so that she can see the world hidden behind our own, what the ancients called “seeing the god Pan”. Years later, in London, men from good society take their own lives one after another, and each time the same woman seems to have crossed their path. Told in fragments, like an investigation, this short tale builds fear touch by touch. Lovecraft admired it, and it is one of the great classics of supernatural fiction. With the translation always in front of you, you can enjoy the shivers in the language you are learning.

In this collection, scholars and lovers of antiquities stumble on old objects that should never have been found. In a church in the Pyrenees, a visitor buys an old album from a terrified verger. Elsewhere, an old engraving mysteriously changes from one day to the next, and a whistle picked up in some ruins by the sea summons something when you blow it. M. R. James is the master of the ghost story: in his stories, fear grows out of a detail, a shadow or a noise in an empty room. You can read each of these short tales in one sitting in the language you are learning.

Laura lives alone with her father in a lonely castle in Styria, far from any neighbours. One evening, a carriage accident leaves a young stranger under their roof: Carmilla, beautiful, languid and full of tenderness for Laura. Soon young women start dying in the surrounding villages, and Laura herself grows weaker, troubled by strange dreams. Carmilla gets up late and refuses to say where she comes from: that is her whole mystery. This short novel, published a quarter of a century before “Dracula”, long shaped the figure of the female vampire. Told by Laura, like a confidence, it can be read in one sitting in the language you are learning.

Saved from a shipwreck, Edward Prendick is put ashore on a remote island in the Pacific, home to a banished scientist, Dr Moreau, and his assistant. At night, screams come from the laboratory. The island's strange inhabitants recite a Law like a prayer: “Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law.” H. G. Wells asks a question that is still with us: how far does science have the right to go, and what separates man from animal? Full of suspense, this novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

Young Jim Shorthouse goes with his Aunt Julia, who is passionate about psychic phenomena, to a small seaside town. They are to spend the night in an empty house, where a crime was committed a century earlier. It is the first of the ten stories in this collection, which also take us to an island on a Canadian lake, a student's room in Edinburgh and deep into the forests of Quebec. In Blackwood's stories you see almost nothing: fear comes from a noise, a silence, a presence you cannot name. You can read each story in one sitting in the language you are learning.

An airman climbs higher than any record to find out whether creatures live in the sky. A doctor resting on a farm in Derbyshire grows worried about sheep that disappear near a cave. A special train hired in Liverpool vanishes in broad daylight between two stations. These twelve stories, six of terror and six of mystery, are by Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Here there is no detective: reasonable people face what they cannot explain. Short and tense, each one can be read in one sitting in the language you are learning.

In New York at the start of the twentieth century, William Destyn, a penniless young man, makes a living from magic tricks with mice dyed every colour. One of them, a green one, escapes into the flat of his neighbour, Ethelinda, a young painter. Now her husband, William invents a device that picks up “psychic currents” and links two people made for each other. With Ethelinda and her sister-in-law Sacharissa, he sets up a company called The Green Mouse to make his fortune. But every test leads to unexpected and comic encounters, in a light fantasy that has fun with science and love. Its lively dialogue makes it an enjoyable read in the language you are learning.