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This collection brings together three sea stories. In “Youth”, Marlow remembers his first voyage as an officer, on a battered old cargo ship that catches fire on the way to the East. In “Typhoon”, Captain MacWhirr, a man without imagination, takes his steamer into the heart of a terrible storm, with two hundred Chinese labourers in the hold. In “The Secret Sharer”, a young captain hides a stranger on board, a man who swam up to the ship in the middle of the night. Conrad, who was a sailor for twenty years, makes you feel the sea like no one else: the danger, the captain's loneliness, the courage of ordinary men. With the translation always in front of you, you can discover them in the language you are learning.

This collection retells fourteen of Shakespeare's comedies and romances in prose. We meet the exiled magician of The Tempest on his island, the fairies who sow confusion in the wood near Athens, the merchant of Venice facing his moneylender, twins who are forever being mistaken for each other and a young woman disguised as a boy. Written in 1807 by Mary Lamb for young readers, these stories full of mix-ups, disguises and happy endings are a very gentle way into Shakespeare. Short and clear, each tale can be read in one sitting in the language you are learning.

The Trojans have reached the Greek ships, and fire threatens the fleet. Patroclus, Achilles' friend, is allowed to wear his armour to drive them back, but he falls at Hector's hands. Mad with grief, Achilles returns to battle, with armour forged by the god Hephaestus, and seeks out Hector beneath the walls of Troy. This second volume contains the most famous pages of the poem, those of mourning, of vengeance and of the pity an enemy can still inspire. Nearly three thousand years later, they have lost none of their force. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great tale in the language you are learning.

Father Brown, a small Catholic priest with an absent-minded air, solves cases that baffle the police and the experts, often with his friend Flambeau, a former thief turned detective. A scientist accused of treason in Paris, travellers held up by brigands in the mountains of Italy, an old Cornish family: each puzzle is solved thanks to a detail no one else noticed. Twelve detective stories full of humour and paradox, in which this quiet priest, who knows the human heart well, guesses the truth before anyone else. You can read each story in one sitting in the language you are learning.

In London at the end of the nineteenth century, Adolf Verloc keeps a shady little shop in Soho, where he lives with his wife Winnie and Winnie's simple-minded young brother, Stevie. Secretly, he spies on anarchists for a foreign embassy. One day, his employer demands that he carry out a bomb attack on the Greenwich Observatory. Inspired by a real failed bombing, it is one of the first great novels about terrorism, and still strikingly relevant. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this dark, ironic novel in the language you are learning.

In the nineteenth-century English countryside, Lady Constantine lives alone on her estate while her husband hunts lions in Africa. She has promised him she will see almost no one, and she is bored. At the top of an old tower she finds Swithin St Cleeve, a young man of twenty who watches the sky and dreams of becoming an astronomer. She helps him with his research, and love grows between them, despite the difference in age and rank. Thomas Hardy sets this intimate story beneath the vastness of the starry sky. With the translation always in front of you, this tender novel is a pleasure to read in the language you are learning.

Pip, a young orphan, is brought up by his sister and her husband Joe, a kind-hearted blacksmith, in the Kent marshes. One evening in the churchyard, he comes across an escaped convict who terrifies him. Then he is invited to the house of Miss Havisham, an old lady who still wears her wedding dress, and who lives with the beautiful, cold Estella. The day an unknown benefactor offers to make him a gentleman in London, Pip's life is turned upside down. His dreams, his mistakes and his illusions make him one of Dickens's most endearing heroes. Pip tells his own story, and this great novel is a pleasure to read in the language you are learning.

In St Petersburg, Raskolnikov, a very poor former student, lives in a tiny room under the roof. He has convinced himself that certain exceptional men have the right to break the law, and he kills an old pawnbroker with an axe. From then on, fear and fever never leave him, while the cunning and patient magistrate Porfiry seems to read his thoughts. We know from the start who the murderer is, and yet the suspense never lets up: everything happens in his conscience. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this masterpiece by Dostoevsky in the language you are learning.

This fourth volume of the Memoirs from Beyond the Grave covers the years 1815 to 1828. Chateaubriand tells of the Hundred Days, which he spends in Ghent with King Louis XVIII, and of the Battle of Waterloo, which he hears thundering in the distance. Then come Napoleon's exile and death on Saint Helena. Chateaubriand also tells of his own career: ambassador in Berlin and London, then Minister of Foreign Affairs. A witness at the heart of events tells from the inside the fall of Napoleon and the return of the kings, and paints a portrait of his friend Madame Récamier. With the translation always in front of you, you can read these famous memoirs in the language you are learning.

Eight years ago, on the advice of those close to her, Anne Elliot gave up marrying Frederick Wentworth, a young naval officer with no fortune. Now her father, ruined by his vanity, has to let the family estate. And Wentworth returns, now a captain, rich and much sought after. Anne sees him again and again, but nothing is ever said openly. Jane Austen's last completed novel tells of a second chance at love, with the subtlety and irony that made her famous. Its witty dialogue and endearing heroine make it an enjoyable read in the language you are learning.

In Germany after the First World War, an elegant old gentleman sits down at a gaming table and wins vast sums. His opponents lose without understanding why, as if bewitched. Behind this face hides Dr Mabuse, a criminal mastermind who changes disguises and uses hypnosis to hold others in his power. A public prosecutor sets off after him: it is the start of a breathless duel with one of the most famous criminals in literature. Fast-paced, the novel is a pleasure to read in the language you are learning.

In Paris, Thérèse, a young society woman in a loveless marriage, is bored in her elegant drawing room. On a trip to Florence, the city whose emblem is the red lily, she falls in love with Jacques Dechartre, a sensitive and passionate artist. But Jacques is jealous, and Thérèse's past comes back to haunt him. A great story of love and jealousy under the Tuscan sun, by Anatole France, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this beautiful novel in the language you are learning.

In a quiet London suburb, twenty-one-year-old Ann Veronica Stanley is stifled by the authority of her father, who forbids her to go to a fancy-dress ball. She leaves home to live alone in London, study biology and run her own life. But money soon runs short, and a young woman's freedom has a price in those days. Wells caused a scandal with the story of this “New Woman”, who dares to claim the right to love and to choose, in the age of the suffragettes. Its lively, determined heroine makes it a gripping read in the language you are learning.

This collection brings together nineteen comic stories. In the first, in Chelsea, Annette Brougham, a young pianist who is composing a waltz, goes upstairs to complain to her neighbour, a painter who bangs on the floor whenever she plays. The other stories range from English country houses to New York. We meet awkward lovers, a dreaded butler, an outstanding swimmer and even a Knight of the Round Table, from the pen of P. G. Wodehouse, one of the great masters of English humour. You can read each story in one sitting 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.

Why are there so many different species, and why does each one seem made for its surroundings? Charles Darwin starts from concrete observations: breeders' pigeons, plants, the animals of distant islands. From them he draws a simple idea: in the struggle for life, it is the best adapted beings that survive and leave offspring. It is in this book that Darwin sets out his theory of evolution by natural selection. It changed for ever the way we see living things and our own place in nature. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great classic of science in the language you are learning.

One summer around 1880, Friedl, a young royal gamekeeper, watches over the game in the mountains of Bavaria, near the little village of Fall, on the River Isar. He is tracking a poacher who kills chamois and roe deer, and who can be recognised by the nine nails in the soles of his shoes. Friedl loves Modei, who tends cows in a mountain hut and is the mother of a little boy. But the child's father, Blasi, also has nine nails in the soles of his shoes. A novel of love and hunting, full of the simple life of Bavarian villages and mountain pastures. Simply written, with vivid scenes, the novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

On the liner bringing him back from New York, Arthur Marcel, a well-off Englishman, meets Herbert Brande, a brilliant scientist who believes the universe is a mistake. Arthur is fascinated by Natalie, the scientist's sister. To stay close to her, he joins the secret society that Brande leads, and discovers that its members communicate by thought. They want to destroy the Earth with the energy locked inside atoms. Written in 1895, long before the atomic bomb, this strange novel already imagines science becoming a threat to the whole world. Told in the first person, it is easy to read 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.

Alone in his house by the Seine, a man keeps a diary. After a fine Brazilian three-master sails past on the river, he sleeps badly, and when he wakes he finds that the water in his carafe has been drunk during the night. He becomes convinced that an invisible being is living beside him. Is he mad, or is something really there? Maupassant never decides, and that doubt is what makes it frightening. The volume also includes other stories by Maupassant. You can read each one in one sitting in the language you are learning.

In a future where humans have colonised Mars, young Lieutenant David Corriston sets off for a huge space station orbiting the Earth, through which every ship passes. During the journey, the bodyguard of Helen Ramsey, daughter of a powerful Martian magnate, is killed before his eyes. Then the young woman disappears. On the station, nobody believes Corriston: they think the journey has disturbed his mind. But he discovers that impostors are hiding behind masks, and he investigates, in a story that is part detective novel, part space adventure. Fast-paced from start to finish, this novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

The three Rover brothers, Dick, Tom and Sam, are spending the end of the summer at Valley Brook, the family farm in New York State. A trip into the mountains leads them to a cave where thieves hide their loot, while two swindlers steal their Uncle Randolph's bonds. Then come their last months at Putnam Hall, a military boarding school: rivalries between pupils, races in the snow and Christmas at the farm. A cheerful adventure about friendship and courage, from a series that thrilled generations of young readers. Its lively dialogue and light tone make it an enjoyable read in the language you are learning.

During the First World War, a German Zeppelin loses its observation car one night, and the car falls near a small town in Norfolk, on the English coast. The next day, a stranger calls on Philippa, Lady Cranston. Philippa's brother is a prisoner in Germany, and this man, who helped him there, brings her news of him. But the stranger serves the enemy, and he asks to live in the town under a false name. Torn between her duty to her country, her love for her brother and her attraction to this stranger, Philippa must choose. Told with elegance and suspense, this spy novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

James diGriz, known as “Slippery Jim”, is a former master swindler, forcibly recruited by the Special Corps, a secret police force that operates among the stars. He is bored filing records when he discovers that a small, peaceful planet, Cittanuvo, is secretly building a giant battleship of a type that vanished a thousand years ago. Disguised as an admiral, he sets off to investigate alone. A humorous science fiction adventure, told by a hero who is as clever as he is cheeky. Lively and ironic, this short story can be read in one sitting in the language you are learning.