Full catalogue

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.

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.

Laura lives alone with her father in a lonely castle in Styria, far from any neighbours. One evening, a carriage accident leaves a young stranger under their roof: Carmilla, beautiful, languid and full of tenderness for Laura. Soon young women start dying in the surrounding villages, and Laura herself grows weaker, troubled by strange dreams. Carmilla gets up late and refuses to say where she comes from: that is her whole mystery. This short novel, published a quarter of a century before “Dracula”, long shaped the figure of the female vampire. Told by Laura, like a confidence, it can be read in one sitting in the language you are learning.

Saved from a shipwreck, Edward Prendick is put ashore on a remote island in the Pacific, home to a banished scientist, Dr Moreau, and his assistant. At night, screams come from the laboratory. The island's strange inhabitants recite a Law like a prayer: “Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law.” H. G. Wells asks a question that is still with us: how far does science have the right to go, and what separates man from animal? Full of suspense, this novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

This collection retells six great tragedies by Shakespeare in prose. Here are Prince Hamlet, who wants to avenge his father, Macbeth, driven to crime by his wife, Othello, the jealous Moor, and old King Lear, betrayed by his daughters. Romeo and Juliet, the lovers of Verona, are here too, with the fabulously rich Timon of Athens. Written in 1807 for young readers, these tales keep Shakespeare's own words in the most famous passages. It is the simplest way into his work. Simply told, these stories are easy to read in the language you are learning.

Young Jim Shorthouse goes with his Aunt Julia, who is passionate about psychic phenomena, to a small seaside town. They are to spend the night in an empty house, where a crime was committed a century earlier. It is the first of the ten stories in this collection, which also take us to an island on a Canadian lake, a student's room in Edinburgh and deep into the forests of Quebec. In Blackwood's stories you see almost nothing: fear comes from a noise, a silence, a presence you cannot name. You can read each story in one sitting in the language you are learning.

An airman climbs higher than any record to find out whether creatures live in the sky. A doctor resting on a farm in Derbyshire grows worried about sheep that disappear near a cave. A special train hired in Liverpool vanishes in broad daylight between two stations. These twelve stories, six of terror and six of mystery, are by Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Here there is no detective: reasonable people face what they cannot explain. Short and tense, each one can be read in one sitting 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.

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.

In a remote village on the Thames marshes, Archie, a poor young painter, wants to marry Lucy. Lucy's stepfather, Professor Braddock, a collector of mummies, sets one condition: Archie must pay for a rare mummy, that of an Inca king wrapped in green bandages. The professor's assistant goes to fetch it from Malta. But when the crate is opened, the mummy has vanished, and in its place lies the assistant's body, strangled. A misty detective puzzle, with a love story thrown in, by the author of “The Mystery of a Hansom Cab”, one of the greatest successes in crime fiction. Its absorbing plot makes it an enjoyable read in the language you are learning.

One night, on board a liner returning from Asia, a passenger who never sleeps approaches the narrator and tells him his secret. A doctor at a remote post in the Dutch East Indies, he was visited by a European woman, beautiful and proud, who came to ask him for a forbidden operation. He refused, out of pride as much as desire, then set off after this woman like a man seized by madness. That is where the title comes from: amok, the frenzy that, in Malaya, drives a man to run straight ahead. You can read this short story by Stefan Zweig in one sitting in the language you are learning.

This collection brings together thirteen stories by the Irish-American writer Donn Byrne. In the title story, a former Broadway dancer is tried in New York for a murder committed ten years earlier. The policeman who brought her back from the South Seas tells the court how a shipwreck changed her. The other stories travel from Ireland to the Andes, from the streets of New York to the biblical times of Delilah and the Queen of Sheba: each story opens a different world. Lively and moving, they can be read one by one, at your own pace, in the language you are learning.

In Vienna, Irene leads a quiet middle-class life with her husband, a lawyer, and their two children. One day, as she leaves the home of her lover, a young pianist, she is stopped by a woman she does not know. The woman accuses her of stealing this man from her, and demands money. The blackmail starts again, over and over, and the fear of being found out invades every moment of her family life. Zweig describes this anguish from the inside, with a tension that never lets the reader go. You can read this short story in one sitting in the language you are learning.

This collection brings together ten stories by Edgar Allan Poe. We enter the House of Usher, an old mansion that cracks along with the family who live in it. We attend the masked ball of Prince Prospero, shut away in his abbey while the Red Death ravages the land, and we listen to a murderer swear that he is not mad. Here too is the first case of the Chevalier Dupin: with this character, Poe invented the detective story, long before Sherlock Holmes. With the translation always in front of you, each story can be read in one sitting in the language you are learning.

One May morning in 1919, in London, the painter Philip Esdaile is hosting breakfast for his friends in his Chelsea studio. Suddenly an aeroplane crashes nearby, and two airmen clinging to the same parachute fall onto the roof: one is dead, while the other, Chummy Smith, a wartime friend of the painter, has survived. On the roof they also find a pistol that has been fired. Rather than call the police, the friends decide to keep the affair secret and find out the truth for themselves. The investigation is told by one of the guests. Its absorbing plot and ironic tone make it an enjoyable read in the language you are learning.