Penguin Readers & Pearson English Readers (2300 headwords)

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.

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…

Mitch McDeere is young, intelligent and ambitious. When he gets a job with the law firm of Bendini, Lambert & Locke it seems to be the path to money and power. But soon Mitch finds that the firm is listening to all his phone calls, and the FBI want to speak to him. Money and power has a price – and it could be Mitch’s life.

Three former judges are in prison. They call themselves the Brethren and organize a pen-pal scam. The money is pouring in. But then the Brethren contact the wrong pen-pal — a powerful man with dangerous friends.

After the death of his beautiful wife Rebecca, Maxim de Winter goes to Monte Carlo to forget the past. There he meets and marries a quiet young woman and takes her back to Manderley, his family home in Cornwall. But will the memory of Rebecca destroy the new marriage?