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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 One State, surrounded by a wall, people no longer have names but numbers. They all live by the same timetable, in glass houses where everyone sees everything. D-503, the engineer of a spaceship meant to carry this perfect happiness to other planets, keeps a diary for the people of those planets. Then he meets I-330, a woman who does not follow the rules. Banned in the Soviet Union, this novel is one of the very first great stories about a totalitarian society, and George Orwell read it before writing “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. Written as a diary, in short entries, the novel can be read with the translation always in front of you, in the language you are learning.

The secret son of King Uther, young Arthur is brought up by the knight Ector without knowing anything of his birth. At fifteen, he pulls from a stone the sword that no lord had been able to move, and becomes king. Around the Round Table, Lancelot, Tristram and Galahad set off on adventures and on the quest for the Grail. Merlin, Excalibur, Camelot: these legends, retold here from Thomas Malory, have inspired countless stories of knights. Told in a clear, lively style, they are a pleasure to read in the language you are learning.

Seneca, philosopher and adviser to the Emperor Nero, writes to those close to him to help them live better. The first of these six dialogues argues that life is not short, but that we waste it, busy with everything except living. The others speak of peace of mind, of the happy life and of the wise man's calm in the face of insults. His advice on the use of time and self-control still speaks to today's reader, and many of his sentences are made to be remembered. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great classic in the language you are learning.

Diogenes Laertius tells the lives and ideas of the philosophers of ancient Greece, from Thales to Epicurus. We see Thales fall into a ditch while gazing at the stars, and Diogenes the Cynic looking for an honest man in broad daylight, lantern in hand, or asking Alexander the Great to stand out of his sun. Funny or surprising, these anecdotes bring the great thinkers close and make them human. We understand what each one thought by seeing how he lived: a lively way into the origins of philosophy. Each life is a story of its own, and the book can be read at your own pace in the language you are learning.

In the little town of Cloisterham, in the shadow of its cathedral, young Edwin Drood is to marry Rosa Bud, a bride chosen for him since childhood. His uncle, John Jasper, the choirmaster, seems to love him dearly, but he secretly smokes opium and hides a passion for Rosa. One Christmas night, Edwin disappears. Dickens died before finishing this novel, without leaving the solution. For more than a hundred and fifty years, readers have been trying to guess what happened to Edwin. Full of suspense, this novel is a pleasure to read in the language you are learning.

Twelve new cases of Sherlock Holmes, told by his friend Dr Watson. Holmes finds a famous missing racehorse, tells Watson about his very first case, and introduces him to his brother Mycroft, who is even better at observation than he is. The collection ends with his confrontation with Professor Moriarty, “the Napoleon of crime”, one of the most famous episodes in detective fiction. You can read each case in one sitting, and the lively dialogue makes them an ideal read in the language you are learning.

Paris, 1819. In the modest Vauquer boarding house, old Goriot, a retired vermicelli maker, goes without everything for his two daughters, who have married into high society. His young neighbour, Rastignac, a poor student from the provinces, dreams of entering that glittering world. The mysterious Vautrin, another lodger, explains its ruthless rules to him. This novel made Rastignac a common noun in French for an ambitious young man. It is one of the high points of “The Human Comedy”, about money, ambition and a father's love. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great novel by Balzac 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.

Born in a workhouse, Oliver Twist grows up hungry, and one day dares to ask for a little more gruel, which causes an outrage. He runs away to London, where he falls into the hands of Fagin, an old man who trains a gang of children to pick people's pockets. Dickens shows the misery of London's poor children, and his characters, like the cunning Fagin, have remained famous. A moving story about innocence in the face of a merciless world. With chapters full of twists, this novel is a gripping read in the language you are learning.

This little collection brings together Zhu Ziqing's most famous prose pieces. In “The Sight of Father's Back”, a clumsy father crosses the tracks at a station to buy oranges for his son. Elsewhere, the author walks at night around a lotus pond under the moon, or glides in a boat along the Qinhuai River in Nanjing. Studied in every school in China, these texts have made this father seen from behind one of the most moving memories in Chinese literature. Short, tender and very musical, they can be read one by one, at your own pace, 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.

Lu Xun remembers his childhood and youth: the Hundred-Plant Garden where he used to play, his old nurse and the book of monsters she gave him, the temple fair he could only see after reciting his lesson. Then come his father's illness, and his student years in Japan with his teacher, Fujino. Ten bittersweet memories, in which we discover the childhood of the greatest modern Chinese writer, and the China of the past. This short book can be read memory by memory, in the language you are learning.

Perdican, who has just taken his doctorate, returns to the family castle, where his father wants him to marry his cousin Camille, who has only just left the convent. Camille rejects him. To sting her, Perdican pretends to court Rosette, a young peasant girl, and the game of pride between the two cousins grows more and more dangerous. Between laughter and tears, this play by Musset holds one of the finest speeches about love, and its title has become a saying in French: you do not trifle with love. Written in short, lively dialogue, it can be read in one sitting 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.

In a future where humans live on Earth, Mars and Venus, Buck Kendall patrols the outer edges of the solar system. Near Pluto, a giant ship attacks him, then flees faster than light. His superiors believe it is pirates. Kendall, who is also a physicist, understands that the enemy comes from another star, and that a whole fleet is advancing on the solar system. This science fiction classic from the 1930s is a race against time to save humanity. To win, Kendall will have to invent a weapon no one has yet imagined. Fast-paced from start to finish, it is easy to read in the language you are learning.

Eleven stories about China in the 1920s. We meet a widow whom the whole village shuns at New Year, a disappointed scholar drinking alone in an inn, a young couple driven apart by poverty, and a man who wants to put out the everlasting lamp in his village temple. After “Call to Arms”, Lu Xun, the greatest modern Chinese writer, offers more intimate stories here, which show with tenderness and clarity a country in the midst of change. The stories are short and can be read one by one, in the language you are learning.

Called out at night in a snowstorm, a country doctor has no horse to make the journey. In a penal colony, an officer proudly shows a visitor a strange execution machine. A hunger artist goes weeks without eating in his cage, while the crowd slowly loses interest. In these three unsettling stories by Kafka, everyday life tips into nightmare without warning, and you do not forget them. Short and written in precise sentences, they can each be read in one sitting in the language you are learning.

Silvia is to marry Dorante, whom she has never seen. To observe him without being recognised, she takes the place of her maid Lisette. But Dorante has had exactly the same idea, and arrives disguised as a manservant. Each then falls in love with someone they believe to be a servant, and no longer knows what to do with their heart. It is Marivaux's most famous comedy, a very subtle game of masks and feelings. Its author even gave a word to the French language: marivaudage. Written in short, lively dialogue, it is easy to read in the language you are learning.

In Naples, while their fathers are away, Octave and Léandre have fallen in love. But these two miserly old men would never accept their sons' choice. The valet Scapin gets them out of trouble by inventing trick after trick to fool the fathers, even shutting one of them in a sack to give him a beating. Farce and wit mix in this comedy, in which Molière wrote one of his most famous lines: “What the devil was he doing in that galley?” Written in short, lively dialogue, it is easy to read in the language you are learning.

Tonio Kröger, son of a respected family in Lübeck, grows up feeling different. He admires his schoolfellow Hans Hansen, blond and sure of himself, then falls in love with blonde Inge, who does not notice him. Once he becomes a writer, he feels at home neither among artists nor among the “normal” people he secretly envies. Thomas Mann put a great deal of himself into it: it is a book for everyone who has ever felt like an outsider. This short story reads well in the language you are learning, with the translation always in view.

Around the year 400, Augustine, now Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, tells the story of his life, speaking directly to God. He remembers his childhood, the pears he stole just for the pleasure of doing wrong, his youth in Carthage and his long search for the truth. Until the day when, in a garden in Milan, he hears a child's voice singing: “Take up and read”. This book is often seen as the first great autobiography of the Western world. We meet a man who doubts, makes mistakes and searches for himself, with a sincerity that still moves us today. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great classic in the language you are learning.