Zjednodušená četba

Jean Valjean is free at last after nineteen years in prison. Cold and hungry, he is rejected by everyone he meets. But Jean’s life is changed forever when he discovers love. He spends the rest of his life helping people, like himself, who have been victims of poverty and social injustice – ‘les misérables’.

Pip is a poor orphan whose life is changed forever by two very different meetings – one with an escaped convict and the other with an eccentric old lady and the beautiful girl who lives with her. And who is the mysterious person who leaves him a fortune?

The horror of death row is that you die a little each day. The waiting kills you. Seventy-year-old Sam Cayhall is on Mississippi’s death row. Sam hates lawyers but his date with the gas chamber is close, and time is running out. Then Adam Hall, a young lawyer arrives. Can he and his secret persuade Sam to accept his help?

‘Close your eyes … imagine idyllic white sands and coral gardens.’ Richard arrives in Thailand. He hears about ‘the beach’, a secret island. It is paradise on earth. He goes there, but paradise soon turns into hell…

On the wild and lonely Yorkshire moors, a tragic story unfolds as Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff fall in love. But it is a dangerous love, filled with unhappiness and suffering. When Catherine finally breaks Heathcliff ’s heart, Heathcliff decides to break everyone else’s and plans a terrible revenge.

These nine stories will take the reader on an exciting journey to distant cultures and times. The collection includes folktales from South America, Africa, India, China, and Europe.

There is a climate of secrecy and fear at the Paris Opera. People are dying and a beautiful, talented young singer has disappeared. Is this the work of the Opera ghost? Is the ghost a man or a monster? And what else will he do to get what he wants?

Ten-year-old Tonya Hailey is attacked and raped by two local men. Carl Lee, Tonya’s father, shoots them. Now only his lawyer and friend, Jake Brigance, stands between him and the electric chair. Is there a legal defense for Carl Lee’s actions?

In this collection of Roald Dahl’s finest stories we meet some quite ordinary people who behave in extraordinary ways. There is a man who is sure he can hear plants scream and the wife who discovers a perfect way to get rid of her husband. And there’s a woman who finds an unusual use for a leg of lamb…

The Internet is the fastest growing phenomenon in technology the world has ever seen, revolutionising business and the lives of almost every person on the planet – in less than ten years.

In these six stories we join the brilliant detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his friend Dr Watson, in a variety of exciting adventures. These include several suspicious deaths, the mystery of the engineer with the missing thumb, and the strange case of the two men who share a very unusual name.

Edgar Allan Poe, ‘the father of the detective story’ and a master of horror, is one of the greatest American short story writers. In these stories we meet people struggling with fear, revenge, mental illness and death. Which of them will win – and which will lose – their battles?