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One Sunday in November, Augustin Meaulnes, a daring teenager, arrives at the school in Sainte-Agathe and fascinates François, the schoolmaster's son. During an escapade, Meaulnes gets lost and comes to a mysterious estate where a strange celebration is being prepared. There he meets a young woman he will never stop searching for. A novel of adolescence, dreams and nostalgia, which keeps alive the memory of that moment when we believe anything is possible. François tells the story as a memory, and the novel is a pleasure to read in the language you are learning.

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.

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.

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.

One winter's day, Stephen Smith, a young assistant to a London architect, arrives in a remote coastal village to survey an old church. Staying with the vicar, he falls in love with his daughter, Elfride, a young woman with blue eyes. But Stephen is hiding a secret: his father is a mason in that very village. Thomas Hardy tells of a love threatened by class differences. The novel contains a famous scene in which a man is left hanging from the edge of a cliff. It is said that this scene gave us the word “cliffhanger”. A sensitive novel to discover in the language you are learning, with the translation always in view.

One August morning, whole trainloads of sick people and pilgrims leave Paris for Lourdes. On board, Marie, a young woman who can no longer walk, hopes to be cured. Travelling beside her is Abbé Pierre Froment, her childhood friend, who became a priest but has lost his faith: she also prays that he will find it again. The novel takes place over five days, among the crowds and the sick. Zola shows the immense hope of those waiting for a miracle, and asks a question that touches everyone: what should we believe in the face of suffering? With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great novel by Zola 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.

At the end of May 1889, endless rain swells the rivers around Johnstown, a factory town in Pennsylvania squeezed into the bottom of a valley. On 31 May, upstream, an earth dam gives way, and the lake it held back rushes down onto the town. Published that same year, this book gathers newspaper dispatches and eyewitness accounts: families taking refuge on rooftops, the fire in the wreckage piled against the stone bridge, then help arriving from all over the country. A direct and often heartbreaking account of a tragedy that moved the whole of America. Written like a long piece of reporting, the book is easy to read in the language you are learning.

In 1908, in a seaside resort in the south of England, Ruth, a former housemaid, marries Ernie Caspar, a working man. He brings up little Alice, born before their marriage, as his own daughter. Children come along, Ernie loses his job and owes the rent to his brother Alf, who still wants Ruth. As strikes spread and war draws near, a trade unionist from the North falls in love with Ruth in his turn. It is a sensitive portrait of a working-class woman, strong and loyal, in England before 1914. Its absorbing story, close to everyday life, is easy to read in the language you are learning.

This collection brings together Lu Xun's first stories, written in China in the years after the fall of the empire. A man becomes convinced that his neighbours want to eat him. A poor old scholar comes to drink his wine in a tavern where people laugh at him. A father buys a blood-soaked remedy to save his son. The most famous story follows Ah Q, a village labourer who turns every humiliation into an imaginary victory. In China, “the Ah Q spirit” still means this way of lying to yourself so as not to see your defeats. With the translation always in front of you, these short stories can be read one by one in the language you are learning.

In a guesthouse on the Riviera, a married woman runs off with a young man she met the day before, and the other guests are outraged. Only the narrator defends her. Soon afterwards, an elderly Englishwoman, Mrs C., confides to him a secret she has kept for more than twenty years: a day in her life that began one evening at the Monte Carlo casino, watching the hands of a young gambler. Stefan Zweig is a master of the confession and of sudden passion: little by little we understand how twenty-four hours can turn a whole life upside down. You can read this short story in one sitting in the language you are learning.

During the war of 1870, ten travellers leave Prussian-occupied Rouen in the same stagecoach: local worthies, two nuns, a democrat and a prostitute nicknamed Boule de Suif. She is the only one who shares her food. But at an inn, a Prussian officer detains them and sets his conditions. This is the story that made Maupassant famous: with irony, he shows what fine principles are worth when everyone is thinking of themselves. Around it, the volume gathers eleven other stories about money, marriage and little middle-class arrangements. Short and lively, they can be read one by one in the language you are learning.

Brought up in a disreputable London tavern, young Paul Clifford is sent to prison for a theft he did not commit. He comes out a thief for good, and becomes the elegant leader of a band of highwaymen who rob wealthy travellers. Then he falls in love with a young woman from good society, Lucy Brandon. The novel opens with a famous line: “It was a dark and stormy night.” Snoopy made it legendary, and it is one of the most quoted opening lines in the world. Full of action and irony, the novel is a pleasure to read in the language you are learning.

Ruined and determined to die, young Raphaël de Valentin walks into an antique shop, where the dealer offers him an animal skin covered in signs. This talisman grants every wish of its owner, but it shrinks with each wish, and its owner's life grows shorter with it. Rich overnight, Raphaël must choose between living long and living out his desires. Balzac blends the supernatural with a portrait of the Paris of his day. The novel left an expression still used in France: to shrink “like the peau de chagrin”. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great novel in the language you are learning.

In northern Alabama around 1874, a cotton mill from New England has brought into being Cottontown, a mill village where children work from morning till night. Hillard Watts, a former plantation overseer turned preacher, watches over these families. His small congregation calls him “the Bishop”. Meanwhile, Richard Travis, the mill's treasurer, is forever looking for new workers. Mixing humour, faith and melodrama, the book, published in 1906, pleads against child labour, sometimes with the dated outlook of its time. With the translation always in front of you, this novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.