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In London in 1872, Phileas Fogg, a very methodical English gentleman, bets a fortune that he can travel around the world in eighty days. He leaves that very evening with Passepartout, his new manservant, a resourceful Frenchman. Inspector Fix sets off after them, convinced he is dealing with a thief. By steamer, by train and even on the back of an elephant, Fogg races against the clock, and one surprise follows another right up to the very last page. Full of pace and humour, the novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

In Hamburg, Professor Lidenbrock, a hot-tempered scientist, deciphers an old parchment with his nephew Axel. In it, an Icelandic alchemist claims to have gone down to the centre of the Earth through the crater of a volcano. The professor sets off at once for Iceland with Axel, who is not at all reassured, and there hires Hans, a guide as calm as he is sturdy. Underground, they discover endless tunnels, a vast sea and creatures long extinct. Jules Verne blends science and imagination so well that you believe in every stage of the journey. Told by Axel, with humour and suspense, the novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

To escape his father, a violent drunkard, and the widow who wants to turn him into a well-behaved boy, Huckleberry Finn fakes his own death. He travels down the Mississippi on a raft with Jim, a runaway slave. Along the river they meet swindlers, feuding families and towns full of danger. In his own boyish words, Huck tells the story of a friendship that overturns everything he has been taught. Hemingway said that all modern American literature comes from this book. With the translation always in front of you, Huck's colourful way of talking and his adventures are a pleasure to read in the language you are learning.

After the Trojan War, Odysseus wants to return home to his island of Ithaca. But it will take him ten years of wandering: he faces the Cyclops, escapes the song of the Sirens and resists the charms of the enchantress Circe. Meanwhile, his wife Penelope fends off the suitors who have overrun her palace. It is the greatest adventure in literature, so much so that its title has become a word: an odyssey. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great tale in the language you are learning.

The only survivor of a shipwreck, Robinson Crusoe is washed up on a desert island. With what he saves from the wreck, he builds a shelter, learns to grow grain and keep goats, and counts the days by cutting notches in a post. One day, after years alone, he finds the print of a bare foot on the beach. It is the first great survival novel, the one that inspired every castaway story since, and the name of Friday has become as famous as Robinson's. Robinson tells his own adventure, like a diary, and the novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

In the nineteenth century, the sailing ship taking two eight-year-old cousins, Dick and Emmeline, to San Francisco catches fire in the middle of the Pacific. The children escape in a small boat with Paddy Button, an old Irish sailor, and the fog separates them from the other boats. They land on a desert island, ringed by a coral reef that shelters a blue lagoon, where Paddy fishes, cooks and looks after them. The years go by: with no school and no society to explain the world to them, the children grow up free. As teenagers, Dick and Emmeline find their feelings changing. An adventure novel about nature, innocence and the discovery of love. Its absorbing story is easy to read in the language you are learning.

In 1845, Henry David Thoreau builds a cabin with his own hands beside Walden Pond, in the woods of Massachusetts, and lives there alone for two years. He grows beans, watches the seasons and the animals, and reduces his needs to the bare essentials. A book that invites you to ask what you really need in order to live. It has become a touchstone for everyone seeking a simpler, freer life, closer to nature. With the translation always in front of you, you can read it chapter by chapter, at your own pace, in the language you are learning.

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.

Rejected by his family and penniless, young Roderick Random leaves his native Scotland to seek his fortune in London, with his faithful friend Strap, a barber. Robbed, deceived and press-ganged into the navy, he becomes a surgeon's mate on a warship and lives through the Battle of Cartagena. Smollett had himself served as a naval surgeon, and his scenes on board are strikingly true to life. Full of hard knocks and satire, this adventure novel delighted Charles Dickens as a child. With the translation always in front of you, its humorous adventures are a pleasure to read in the language you are learning.

One June morning, a young man who calls himself Walker Farr is walking the roads of New England. He looks like a tramp, but he speaks like an educated man and hides his past. He stops at Marion, a cotton-mill town. Typhoid is striking its poor families, because of the water sold by Colonel Dodd's company. Dodd also controls the state's politicians. Asking nothing for himself, Farr joins the fight against him, and meets Kate Kilgour, Dodd's secretary. A lively novel about the courage of one man against a political machine. Absorbing from start to finish, this story is easy to read 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.

Settled in an old windmill in Provence, Daudet writes to his Parisian readers with stories from the region. We meet Monsieur Seguin's goat, who dreams of freedom in the mountains, the priest of Cucugnan, who makes his parishioners tremble with a sermon about hell, and Father Gaucher, whose elixir makes his monastery's fortune. Part farce, part legend, part melancholy, these tales are known to generations of children, and you can feel the sun and the mistral on every page. Short and written in a simple, musical style, they can be read one by one in the language you are learning.

On the coast of Maine, young Captain Boyd Mayo commands the yacht of Julius Marston, a rich Wall Street financier, and falls for his daughter, Alma. Humiliated by Marston in front of his guests, he decides to leave. That same night, in the fog, a very old sailing ship loaded with timber catches him as it passes and carries him off to sea against his will. After a storm, he helps fishing families driven from their island, and takes on Marston, who wants to seize the steamship lines along the coast. A humorous novel of adventure and love, set to the rhythm of old sea shanties. Its lively dialogue and absorbing story make it an enjoyable read in the language you are learning.

Born in Brooklyn, Austin Bidwell starts work young in a Wall Street office, where he acquires a taste for gambling and easy money. In 1873, with his brother George and two accomplices, he pulls off a coup of incredible daring: getting the Bank of England to accept forged bills of exchange. Then come the escape, through Ireland, Spain and Cuba, the trial and prison. These are the memoirs of a real swindler, who gives an insider's view of the finance, police and prisons of the nineteenth century. Told in the first person, like an adventure story, it is easy to read in the language you are learning.