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In Edinburgh in 1751, young David Balfour has just come into his inheritance. He wants to testify to save an innocent man accused of a political murder, but the men in power have already chosen their culprit, and they mean to stop David from speaking. At the same time, he meets Catriona Drummond, a strong-willed young woman from the Highlands. Plots, danger and a love story mix in the troubled Scotland of the eighteenth century, where David meets up again with Alan Breck, his rebellious, swaggering friend. Told by David himself, with plenty of dialogue, it is a pleasure to read in the language you are learning.

In 1859, the philosopher John Stuart Mill asks a simple question: how far does society have the right to control an individual? His answer comes down to one principle: everyone should be able to think, speak and live as they wish, so long as they do no harm to others. Mill defends freedom of speech, even for shocking ideas, and warns against the “tyranny of the majority”. In the age of social media, his arguments help us work out what we can say, and what we should tolerate. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this founding text in the language you are learning.

One winter evening, Alice climbs through the drawing-room mirror and finds a house where everything is reversed. Outside, the countryside forms a huge chessboard, which Alice must cross square by square to become a queen. On the way she meets Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Humpty Dumpty sitting on his wall, and a Red Queen who keeps running just to stay in the same place. In this sequel to “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland”, the games with words and logic are even more plentiful. It is here that the famous poem “Jabberwocky” appears. Its simple sentences and lively dialogue make it an ideal classic to read in the language you are learning.

Two days before Christmas, Katherine arrives in Oakwood to spend the holidays with her friends at Carver House, the old mansion where their Guardian, Nyoda, lives. Lost on the way, she goes into an abandoned house and finds Sylvia, an eighteen-year-old girl who has not been able to walk since a fall, alone there with no fire and no food. At Carver House, a boarded-up window, footprints and a secret passage soon pose a puzzle. Taken from a series about the Camp Fire Girls, an American movement for girls, this children's novel is a warm-hearted story in which the mystery goes hand in hand with friendship and helping others. Simply written, it is easy to read in the language you are learning.

In St Petersburg, Hermann, a young officer, watches his fellow officers play cards every night without ever placing a bet himself. He learns that an old countess is said to know the secret of three cards that always win. To get close to her, he courts Lizaveta, the poor young woman who lives with the countess, and one night he slips into the house. This short story by Pushkin builds the tension right to the end, and leaves a doubt hanging: chance, madness or the supernatural? You can read it in one sitting in the language you are learning.

In an English village, Emma Woodhouse, young, beautiful, rich and sure of herself, amuses herself by arranging other people's marriages. She takes under her wing Harriet, a young woman with no fortune, and decides to find her a husband in her own way. But Emma reads hearts badly, starting with her own. A comedy full of misunderstandings, in which Jane Austen gently mocks her heroine, and we laugh at her mistakes before recognising ourselves in them. Its witty dialogue is a pleasure to read in the language you are learning.

“I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man.” So begins the confession of a former minor civil servant, bitter and solitary, shut away in a corner of St Petersburg. First he explains, provocatively, why he rejects reason and progress. Then he tells of a humiliating evening with old schoolfellows, and of his meeting with a young woman, Liza. This narrator mocks everything, himself as much as the reader, and yet he fascinates. This book is often seen as the way into Dostoevsky's great novels. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this feverish text 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.

Gustav von Aschenbach, a famous ageing writer worn out by work, goes to Venice to rest. In his grand hotel on the Lido, he is fascinated by a young Polish boy, Tadzio, whose beauty seems perfect to him. Meanwhile, an epidemic is secretly spreading through the city. This short novel is about the fascination of beauty, and about a very self-controlled man who little by little loses all control. It is one of the most famous stories of the twentieth century. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this masterpiece in the language you are learning.

The son of a sawmill owner in the Jura, Julien Sorel is poor, proud and ambitious, and secretly admires Napoleon. Taken on as tutor in the household of the mayor of Verrières, he seduces his wife, Madame de Rênal. Then, from the seminary in Besançon to the Paris mansion of the Marquis de La Mole, he climbs through a society that despises him. It is Stendhal's great novel of ambition and love. Julien, alone against a whole society, is one of the most fascinating heroes in literature. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this masterpiece in the language you are learning.

Young Werther settles in a quiet German village. At a ball he meets Charlotte, a radiant young woman who looks after her little brothers and sisters, but who is already promised to another man. In the letters he writes to his friend Wilhelm, Werther tells of his happiness, then of his torment. This short novel made Goethe famous overnight. All Europe was gripped by Werther, so much so that young men began to dress like him, in a blue coat and a yellow waistcoat. Written in the form of letters, it is easy to read in the language you are learning.

This collection brings together nine fairy tales by Oscar Wilde. A golden statue and a swallow help the poor of the town, a nightingale wants to give a red rose to a student in love, and a selfish giant sees his garden stay locked in winter. We also meet a young king, an Infanta and a fisherman ready to give up his soul. Written for children as much as for adults, these poetic and ironic tales still move readers more than a century later. You can read each tale in one sitting in the language you are learning.

In Andalusia, a scholarly traveller meets a wanted bandit, Don José, and then, in Córdoba, a gypsy woman who tells fortunes: Carmen. Months later, he finds Don José in prison, on the eve of his execution, and listens to him tell his life story. A young soldier marked out for promotion, Don José lost everything the day he met Carmen. Free and defiant, Carmen gives in to no one: she has become one of the most famous heroines in the world, so much so that her name alone stands for passion. You can read this short story in one sitting in the language you are learning.

In the forest along the Paraná River, the animals talk, work and quarrel. In these eight tales, a giant turtle carries the man who had once nursed it all the way to the city, flamingos go to a ball in snakeskin stockings, and the crocodiles go to war against a ship. Horacio Quiroga wrote these stories for his children, in the forest where he lived. They are funny, sometimes cruel, and one of them explains why flamingos have red legs. Short and written in simple sentences, these tales can be read one by one 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.

This collection brings together forty tales gathered by the Brothers Grimm: Snow White and the queen's magic mirror, Hansel and Gretel lost in the forest, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and lesser-known ones such as “The Blue Light”. Here we meet witches, talking animals and clever young heroes. These are the tales children have been told for two centuries, here in the text of the Grimms' last edition, from 1857, which is often darker than the versions we know. Short and simply written, they can be read one by one in the language you are learning.

John Carter, a former officer from Virginia, takes refuge in a cave in Arizona and suddenly finds himself on Mars. Because gravity there is weaker, he makes huge leaps and becomes astonishingly strong. Captured by giant green warriors, he wins their respect, then meets Dejah Thoris, a princess who is a prisoner like him. This novel, the first in a long series of adventures on Mars, has inspired generations of science fiction writers. Fights, friendship and love follow one another without a dull moment. Told by John Carter himself, it 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.

On Wall Street, a lawyer takes on a new copyist, Bartleby, a pale, quiet young man who is very diligent at first. One day, when his employer asks him to check a copy with him, Bartleby simply replies: “I would prefer not to.” Then he gives the same answer to every request, without ever leaving the office. Funny and unsettling at once, this short story asks a question you do not forget: what do you do with someone who refuses everything, politely and without anger? His phrase, “I would prefer not to”, has become famous all over the world. You can read the story in one sitting in the language you are learning.

On a feast day at Piraeus, the port of Athens, Socrates and his friends ask what justice is, and whether the just man is happier than the unjust one. To answer, Socrates imagines an ideal city ruled by philosophers. This is where he tells the famous allegory of the cave: chained prisoners take shadows on a wall for reality. For more than two thousand years, this book has fed debates on power, education and truth. It still helps us ask who should govern, and why. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great dialogue in the language you are learning.

On a fine June morning in London, Clarissa Dalloway is preparing the party she is giving that evening. As the day goes by, marked by the chimes of Big Ben, she thinks back to her youth and to Peter Walsh, the man she did not marry. Elsewhere in the city, Septimus, a former soldier, still carries the war inside him. The whole novel takes place in a single day, and we move from one character to another as if we could hear them think. Its first line, in which Mrs Dalloway says she will buy the flowers herself, has become famous. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great classic in the language you are learning.

In London, Gabriel Syme, a poet who has secretly become a policeman, manages to get himself elected to the supreme council of Europe's anarchists. Its seven members are each named after a day of the week, and Syme becomes Thursday. There he uncovers a plot, and a huge, terrifying leader whom everyone calls Sunday. Chases, masks falling, reversals: nothing is ever what it seems. It is a spy novel full of humour, which Chesterton himself subtitled “A Nightmare”. Fast-paced from start to finish, the novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

Father Brown is a small, clumsy Catholic priest, always weighed down by a big umbrella, and no one suspects him. Yet he is the one who unmasks criminals where the police fail: a disguised master thief, a murderer no one saw come in, a crime committed at the foot of a church. His secret: from listening to so many confessions, he knows evil better than anyone. These twelve short cases have made him one of the most endearing detectives in literature. You can read each case in one sitting in the language you are learning.

At seventeen, the Chevalier des Grieux, a young man from a good family, meets the beautiful Manon Lescaut in Amiens, as she is being taken to a convent. He runs off with her at once and gives up everything for her: his family, his fortune, his honour. Through escapes, cheating at cards and spells in prison, he will follow her all the way to Louisiana. Manon loves des Grieux, but she also loves luxury, and that is her whole mystery: you never know whether she will betray him or follow him. Published in 1731, it remains one of the finest stories of passion in literature. Told by des Grieux himself, it can be read in one sitting in the language you are learning.