Zjednodušená četba

General Sternwood has four million dollars, and two young daughters, both pretty and both wild. He's an old, sick man, close to death, but he doesn't like being blackmailed. So he asks private detective Philip Marlowe to get the blackmailer off his back. Marlowe knows the dark side of life in Los Angeles well, and nothing much surprises him. But the Sternwood girls are a lot wilder than their old father realizes. They like men, drink, drugs - and it's not just a question of blackmail. Crime Mystery

Conradin is ten years old. He lives alone with his aunt. He has two big secrets. The first is that he hates his aunt. The second is that he keeps a small, wild animal in the garden shed. The animal has sharp, white teeth, and it loves fresh blood. Every night, Conradin prays to this animal and asks it to do one thing for him, just one thing. This collection of short stories is clever, funny, and shows us 'Nature, red in tooth and claw'. In other words, it is Saki at his very best. Human Interest

Fourteen-year-old Molly and her cousins Daisy and Gracie were mixed-race Aborigines. In 1931 they were taken away from their families and sent to a camp to be trained as good 'white' Australians. They were told to forget their mothers, their language, their home. But Molly would not forget. She and her cousins escaped and walked back to Jigalong, 1600 kilometres away, following the rabbit-proof fence north as part of their guide across the desert. This is the true stoy of that walk, told by Molly's daughter, Doris. It is also a prize-winning film. True Stories

If you wake up in the night and hear a tap running somewhere in the house, what do you do? You get up, of course, and go and turn the tap off. A little later you hear the tap running again. You are alone in the house, and you know you turned the tap off. What do you do then? The ghosts in these stories all have unfinished business with the living world. They come back from the grave to continue their work, to keep a promise, to look for something they have lost. Sometimes they want to help people, sometimes they want to punish them - or kill them. Fantasy Horror

For fifty years after Dr Watson's death, a packet of papers, written by the doctor himself, lay hidden in a locked box. The papers contained an extraordinary report of the case of Jack the Ripper and the horrible murders in the East End of London in 1888. The detective, of course, was the great Sherlock Holmes - but why was the report kept hidden for so long? This is the story that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never wrote. It is a strange and frightening tale ...

Crime Mystery

London: November. Terrorists blow up the Queen's coach outside Parliament. The Queen escapes, but five people are killed, and forty others badly hurt - ordinary, innocent people, like Alan Cole, the Queen's coachman, who loses his leg in the bombing. And for Alan and his daughter Jane there is more terror to come, in the search for the truth behind the bombing. Will the terrorists be caught and brought to justice? But what kind of justice? What can give Alan Cole his leg back, or give life back to people who have been blown to pieces by a bomb? Thriller Adventure

‘Always be good, so people will love you. Always work hard and do your best.’ These were the words of Black Beauty’s mother to her son when the two horses lived with Farmer Grey. But when Black Beauty got older, this was sometimes very difficult for him. Not everybody was as kind as Farmer Grey.

Richard is bored with the quiet life of his village. He would like to have a motor-car and drive it ...very fast. But Richard lives in a future world where there are no cars, only bicycles and small villages and green forests. And now he is twelve years old, and like the other children, he must do his Year of Sharing. He must live alone in the forest with the wild animals. He must learn to share his world; he must learn how animals live and eat and fight ...and die.

Fantasy Horror

A housewife, a tramp, a lawyer, a waitress, an actress - ordinary people living ordinary lives in New York at the beginning of this century. The city has changed greatly since that time, but its people are much the same. Some are rich, some are poor, some are happy, some are sad, some have found love, some are looking for love. O. Henry's famous short stories - sensitive, funny, sympathetic - give us vivid pictures of the everyday lives of these New Yorkers.

PLAYSCRIPT

All he wanted to do was to marry the woman he loved. But his country said 'No!' He was Edward VIII, King of Great Britain, King of India, King of Australia, and King of thirty-nine other countries. And he loved the wrong woman. She was beautiful and she loved him - but she was already married to another man. It was a love story that shook the world. The King had to choose: to be King, or to have love ...and leave his country, never to return. True Stories