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As a child, Mark Twain dreamed of piloting a steamboat on the Mississippi. As a young man, he becomes an apprentice pilot and has to learn by heart every bend in the river and every sandbank, by day and by night. Twenty years later, he returns to the river and discovers how much the world has changed. Memories, anecdotes and humorous portraits: it is in this book that he explains where his pen name, “Mark Twain”, comes from: a call used by the boatmen who sounded the river. Full of true stories, this book is easy to read in the language you are learning.

Gordon Gregg, an English writer living near Leghorn, in Italy, stands in for the British consul for a while. He receives the owner of a stranded yacht, dines on board and finds the torn photograph of a young Englishwoman, Elma Heath. The next day, the consulate safe has been opened and the yacht has vanished. His investigation takes him to London, to Scotland, then to Finland, at that time a province of the Russian Empire, where the young woman seems to be in great danger. Amid false identities, an ordinary man tries to save a woman he does not know. Fast and full of mystery, this novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

In the fifth century BC, Athens and Sparta, the two greatest cities of Greece, wage war on each other for almost thirty years. Thucydides, an Athenian general who lived through it, tells of the battles, the plague that strikes Athens, the speeches of Pericles and the disastrous expedition against Sicily. He tries to understand what drives men to war: fear, interest, honour. His lessons still hold: people still speak of the “Thucydides Trap” when a rising power alarms an established one. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great classic of history in the language you are learning.

In India, two babies are mixed up: the son of a captain and the son of a sergeant. Unable to tell which one is his, Captain Clinton brings up both boys as twins, Rupert and Edgar. When Edgar is sixteen, a stranger tells him that she is his real mother, and he runs away to join the army under a false name. With him, we travel up the Nile alongside the expedition sent to relieve General Gordon, besieged in Khartoum in 1884. A story of war and brotherly friendship that closely follows a very real campaign. Full of action, it is easy to read in the language you are learning.

One August morning, whole trainloads of sick people and pilgrims leave Paris for Lourdes. On board, Marie, a young woman who can no longer walk, hopes to be cured. Travelling beside her is Abbé Pierre Froment, her childhood friend, who became a priest but has lost his faith: she also prays that he will find it again. The novel takes place over five days, among the crowds and the sick. Zola shows the immense hope of those waiting for a miracle, and asks a question that touches everyone: what should we believe in the face of suffering? With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great novel by Zola in the language you are learning.

The book opens with Mark Antony, who abandons his troops at Actium to chase after Cleopatra. Then, chapter after chapter, Lyndon Orr tells of other famous couples in history, some of whom were led to their ruin by passion. Each chapter reads like a short true story, in which we discover how love could change the fate of the great. You can read these stories one by one, at your own pace, in the language you are learning.

At the end of May 1889, endless rain swells the rivers around Johnstown, a factory town in Pennsylvania squeezed into the bottom of a valley. On 31 May, upstream, an earth dam gives way, and the lake it held back rushes down onto the town. Published that same year, this book gathers newspaper dispatches and eyewitness accounts: families taking refuge on rooftops, the fire in the wreckage piled against the stone bridge, then help arriving from all over the country. A direct and often heartbreaking account of a tragedy that moved the whole of America. Written like a long piece of reporting, the book is easy to read in the language you are learning.

This collection brings together Lu Xun's first stories, written in China in the years after the fall of the empire. A man becomes convinced that his neighbours want to eat him. A poor old scholar comes to drink his wine in a tavern where people laugh at him. A father buys a blood-soaked remedy to save his son. The most famous story follows Ah Q, a village labourer who turns every humiliation into an imaginary victory. In China, “the Ah Q spirit” still means this way of lying to yourself so as not to see your defeats. With the translation always in front of you, these short stories can be read one by one in the language you are learning.

During the war of 1870, ten travellers leave Prussian-occupied Rouen in the same stagecoach: local worthies, two nuns, a democrat and a prostitute nicknamed Boule de Suif. She is the only one who shares her food. But at an inn, a Prussian officer detains them and sets his conditions. This is the story that made Maupassant famous: with irony, he shows what fine principles are worth when everyone is thinking of themselves. Around it, the volume gathers eleven other stories about money, marriage and little middle-class arrangements. Short and lively, they can be read one by one in the language you are learning.

This travel book, published in 1910, visits the homes of the kings of France, in Paris and around the capital: the Louvre, the Tuileries, Fontainebleau, Versailles, Chantilly and Compiègne. It also tells of the art of the French formal garden and of the great royal hunts. Rather than dates, the author gathers the anecdotes left by the old chroniclers: a lively stroll through centuries of French history. The book goes from palace to palace and can be read at your own pace in the language you are learning.

With humour, the Scottish historian John Hill Burton paints a portrait of book hunters: the collector who ends up buying a second copy of a book he already owns, the browser who rummages through second-hand bookshops, the regular at auctions, the reader who reads a bit of everything. He also tells of the birth of the great libraries and of book collectors' clubs, such as the Roxburghe Club. A learned and good-humoured book for everyone who loves books and old editions. This edition opens with the author's biography, written by his widow. Its chapters can be read one by one, at your own pace, in the language you are learning.

Harriet Martineau is born in 1802 in Norwich and loses her hearing in her teens. Yet she becomes a writer, and enjoys enormous success with stories that explain economics to everyone. She travels to the United States, where she speaks out against slavery, then goes through five years of illness. She also writes for a major London newspaper. In this biography, Florence Fenwick Miller paints a portrait of a free and tireless woman who made herself heard at a time when women were rarely listened to. With the translation always in front of you, this extraordinary life is easy to read in the language you are learning.

Philipp, known as Pitt, is secretive and ironic, and nothing really excites him. His younger brother Fox, a fat, vain boy, boasts all the time and thinks he is destined for a great future. Sons of a small-town manufacturer, the two brothers go off to study and meet very different young women: a pianist from a good family, a future schoolmistress, the daughter of a rich banker. A subtle and slightly melancholy comedy about two opposite characters, and about their ways of loving. Its ironic tone makes it an enjoyable read in the language you are learning.

In 1854, Harry Hardinge, a young officer in the Welsh Fusiliers, is waiting to leave for the war against Russia. On a large estate in Wales, he is reunited with Lady Estelle, whom he loves in silence, and a troubling rival. Then his regiment leaves for the Crimea, and Harry experiences the Battle of Inkerman and the trenches before Sevastopol. A novel of war and love, which stays close to the soldiers marching under the flag of the red dragon. Harry tells his own story, and this action-packed novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

At the end of 1853, Newton Norcliff, a young lieutenant in a British lancer regiment, learns that his regiment will leave in the spring for the war in the East. He spends his last leave in Scotland, with Lady Louisa, whom he loves, and who is also courted by Berkeley, a cold and cunning officer. Newton and Louisa become secretly engaged, then Newton sets sail for the Crimea. Written by a former officer, this novel takes us from garrison life to the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, the charge of the “six hundred” that Tennyson made famous in a poem. Newton tells his own story, and the novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

Chichikov arrives in a provincial town, charms all of polite society and pays visits to the landowners round about. He offers them a strange deal: to buy their dead serfs. These peasants have died since the last census, but they are still on the registers, and their masters still pay tax on them. From estate to estate come the miser, the boor, the suspicious widow and the dreamer: Gogol draws from them a gallery of irresistible portraits, and one of the funniest novels in Russian literature. With the translation always in front of you, this humorous novel is a pleasure to read in the language you are learning.

In Rome in the third century, after the fall of Palmyra, the nobleman Lucius Manlius Piso writes to his friend Fausta, who has stayed in the East. He tells her about Queen Zenobia, defeated and exiled near Rome, and about the Emperor Aurelian, a feared warrior who decides to crush the Christians. Yet Piso himself shares this new faith. This novel brings Rome to life at a time when two religions clash, seen from the inside by a witness in danger. It follows on from “Zenobia”, but Piso tells Fausta what has become of the queen, so it is easy to step into the story. Written in the form of letters, it is easy to read, one letter after another, in the language you are learning.

In the 1260s, England is torn apart between King Henry III and the barons led by Simon de Montfort. Hugh de Monthermer, a young knight, loves Lucy de Ashby, the daughter of a house once hostile to his own. Meanwhile, in Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood and his outlaws take the side of the barons. From village fairs to the Battle of Evesham, this novel of adventure and love brings a medieval civil war back to life, with the most famous of all outlaws at the heart of the action. Full of twists, it is a pleasure to read in the language you are learning.