From out of the sky, from under the earth, from far out at sea - disaster comes. We build and invent new things - and sometimes bring disaster on ourselves. Today television and the Internet mean that we can watch disasters as they happen, and see their terrible results. From Pompeii to the Asian Tsunami, from the Great Fire of London to Chernobyl, the stories of disasters are frightening, but they have much to tell us. Disasters bring stories of fear, pain, loss, and death - but also of people whose extraordinary bravery and feeling for others will touch your heart.

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. In a hole under the floorboards Silas Marner the linen-weaver keeps his gold. Every day he works hard at his weaving, and every night he takes the gold out and holds the bright coins lovingly, feeling them and counting them again and again. The villagers are afraid of him and he has no family, no friends. Only the gold is his friend, his delight, his reason for living. But what if a thief should come in the night and take his gold away? What will Silas do then? What could possibly comfort him for the loss of his only friend? CEFR B1-B2 Word count 16,065

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. You are walking through the streets of London. It is getting dark and you want to get home quickly. You enter a narrow side-street. Everything is quiet, but as you pass the door of a large, windowless building, you hear a key turning in the lock. A man comes out and looks at you. You have never seen him before, but you realize immediately that he hates you. You are shocked to discover, also, that you hate him. Who is this man that everybody hates? And why is he coming out of the laboratory of the very respectable Dr Jekyll? CEFR B1-B2 Word count 12,520

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. Arthur Clennam is back in England after many years abroad. He finds his mother as cold and hard as ever, but his father's recent death has thrown up a mystery, and he is determined to get to the bottom of it. Could it have anything to do with Little Dorrit, the quiet, kind girl who sews for his mother and goes back at night to her home in the Marshalsea Prison? As Arthur gets to know the Dorrit family, he is too busy looking for the truth about his mother's secret to notice that he has perhaps found the answer to his own happiness... CEFR B2 Word count 25,189

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. You're fast asleep, and nothing is happening. Or is it? In fact, your body is hard at work. Your lungs are taking oxygen from the air, and your heart is pumping blood round your body. Millions of pieces of information are travelling backwards and forwards to your brain all the time. Muscles are repairing themselves, and in your lymph nodes special cells are cleaning germs and waste from the body. You may think that nothing is happening, but in the extraordinary machine that is the human body, it is very busy indeed... CEFR B1 Word count 10,489

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. It's an exciting life - full of fast cars, money, and travel. The names of Formula One champions are known all over the world. And everywhere young drivers dream of success one day in Monaco, Melbourne, Monza... But it is a difficult life too. Drivers need strong bodies - and minds. They need to think quickly, drive hard, and sometimes look death in the face. This is the dangerous, exciting world of Formula One - where the world's best drivers have only seconds to win or lose a race. CEFR B1 Word count 10,645

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. What do you find in these two countries at the end of the world? One is an enormous island, where only twenty million people live - and the other is two long, narrow islands, with ten sheep for every person. One country has the biggest rock in all the world, and a town where everybody lives under the ground; the other has a beach where you can sit beside the sea in a pool of hot water, and lakes that are bright yellow, green, and blue. Open this book and start your journey - to two countries where something beautiful or surprising waits around every corner. CEFR B1 Word count 10,270

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. Sometimes the Dashwood girls do not seem like sisters. Elinor is all calmness and reason, and can be relied upon for practical, common sense opinions. Marianne, on the other hand, is all sensibility, full of passionate and romantic feeling. She has no time for dull common sense - or for middle-aged men of thirty-five, long past the age of marriage. True love can only be felt by the young, of course. And if your heart is broken at the age of seventeen, how can you ever expect to recover from the passionate misery that fills your life, waking and sleeping? CEFR B2 Word count 24,345

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. It is 1866, and there is trouble in the world's oceans. What is the extraordinary thing that people have seen there, travelling faster than a whale and cutting holes in the bottom of the strongest ships? Dr Aronnax joins the search for the 'monster', hoping for an exciting adventure. But when he meets the mysterious Captain Nemo, his adventure becomes more extraordinary than he had ever imagined, and he discovers a new underwater world, full of wonders, but of strange dangers too... CEFR B1-B2 Word count 15,748

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. When a handsome young man begins to court Catherine Sloper, she feels she is very lucky. She is a quiet, gentle girl, but neither beautiful nor clever; no one had ever admired her before, or come to the front parlour of her home in Washington Square to whisper soft words of love to her. But in New York in the 1840s young ladies are not free to marry where they please. Catherine must have her father's permission, and Dr Sloper is a rich man. One day Catherine will have a fortune of 30,000 dollars a year... CEFR B1-B2 Word count 15,490

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. The murder plan seems so neat, so clever. How can it possibly fail? And when Sonia's stupid, boring little husband is dead, she will be free to marry her handsome lover. But perhaps the boring little husband is not so stupid after all... Murder plans that go wrong, a burglar who makes a bad mistake, a famous jewel thief who meets a very unusual detective... These five stories from the golden age of crime writing are full of mystery and surprises. CEFR B1 Word count 9,600

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. When did you last meet a polar bear, or go to a magician for help? These stories offer many different experiences. Some are strange, some are scary, some are sad, some are blackly funny. A few are shocking - when Lin Lin returns home for a funeral, she learns a dark and terrible family secret which may destroy her. Bookworms World Stories collect stories written in English from around the world. These stories are from Australia, Canada, India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa, and Trinidad. CEFR B1-B2 Word count 13,874

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. Soon I felt something alive moving along my leg and up my body to my face, and when I looked down, I saw a very small human being, only fifteen centimetres tall... I was so surprised that I gave a great shout.' But that is only the first of many surprises which Gulliver has on his travels. He visits a land of giants and a flying island, meets ghosts from the past and horses which talk... CEFR B1-B2 Word count 15,325

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. John Duncan was an honest man, but he needed money. He had children to look after. He was ready to do anything, and his bosses knew it. They gave him the job because he couldn't say no; he couldn't afford to be honest. And the job was like a poison inside him. It changed him and blinded him, so that he couldn't see the real poison - until it was too late. CEFR B1 Word count 10,385

Emma Woodhouse, beautiful, clever and rich, has no wish to marry, but she enjoys making matches for those around her. It was Emma who found the perfect husband for her governess Miss Taylor. So when her dear friend Mr Knightley tells her that she should let people choose their own husbands and wives, she will not listen. But does Emma really understand people as well as she thinks? And is she even right about her own feelings, when she says that she will never fall in love?

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. Please, Mr Murdstone! Don't beat me! I've tried to learn my lessons, really I have, sir!' sobs David. Although he is only eight years old, Mr Murdstone does beat him, and David is so frightened that he bites his cruel stepfather's hand. For that, he is kept locked in his room for five days and nights, and nobody is allowed to speak to him. As David grows up, he learns that life is full of trouble and misery and cruelty. But he also finds laughter and kindness, trust and friendship... and love. CEFR B2 Word count 24,770

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. Tom Sawyer does not like school. He does not like work, and he never wants to get out of bed in the morning. But he likes swimming and fishing, and having adventures with his friends. And he has a lot of adventures. One night, he and his friend Huck Finn go to the graveyard to look for ghosts. They don't see any ghosts that night. They see something worse than a ghost - much, much worse... CEFR A1-A2 Word count 5,825

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. Oh, how delightful it is to fall in love for the first time! How exciting to go to your first dance when you are a girl of eighteen! But life can also be hard and cruel, if you are young and inexperienced and travelling alone across Europe... or if you are a child from the wrong social class... or a singer without work and the rent to be paid. Set in Europe and New Zealand, these nine stories by Katherine Mansfield dig deep beneath the appearances of life to show us the causes of human happiness and despair. CEFR B2 Word count 22,665

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. The Marquis lay there, like stone, with a knife pushed into his heart. On his chest lay a piece of paper, with the words: Drive him fast to the grave. This is from JACQUES.' The French Revolution brings terror and death to many people. But even in these troubled times people can still love and be kind. They can be generous and true-hearted... and brave. CEFR B1-B2 Word count 14,850

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. Alex's family are always moving from town to town. He doesn't make new friends now, because he doesn't like saying goodbye to them. He has his music, his songs, and his guitar, and they're only for him. It's best like that, he thinks. Then he meets Bella, and everything gets difficult. He likes her. He likes her very much. But she wants him to play his music for everyone. And how can he say goodbye to her, when his parents decide to move again? CEFR A1-A2 Word count 5,830

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. Into the narrow social world of New York in the 1870s comes Countess Ellen Olenska, surrounded by shocked whispers about her failed marriage to a rich Polish Count. A woman who leaves her husband can never be accepted in polite society. Newland Archer is engaged to young May Welland, but the beautiful and mysterious Countess needs his help. He becomes her friend and defender, but friendship with an unhappy, lonely woman is a dangerous path for a young man to follow - especially a young man who is soon to be married. CEFR B2 Word count 24,820

Bookworms Club offers five collections of adapted short stories, selected from existing Bookworms, with resources for use with Reading Circles. The resources are available as a Teacher's Handbook. Reading Circles are groups of students who meet in the classroom to disucss stories, having prepared their reading circle role. Bookworms Club provides all that is needed for running successful Reading Circles: Stories at a range of abilities drawn form the respected Bookworms series, specially chosen for use with Reading Circles classes; Story introductions, author information, and activities for each stories; detailed information and support for running Reading Circles; resources include photocopiable Role Sheets and Role Badges, Reading Circles Schedule chart, and Expansion Activities.

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. Bathsheba Everdene is young, proud, and beautiful. She is an independent woman and can marry any man she chooses - if she chooses. In fact, she likes her independence, and she likes fighting her own battles in a man's world. But it is never wise to ignore the power of love. There are three men who would very much like to marry Bathsheba. When she falls in love with one of them, she soon wishes she had kept her independence. She learns that love brings misery, pain, and violent passions that can destroy lives... CEFR B2 Word count 24,490

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. When Christmas comes for the four March girls, there is no money for expensive presents and they give away their Christmas breakfast to a poor family. But there are no happier girls in America than Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. They miss their father, of course, who is away at the Civil War, but they try hard to be good so that he will be proud of his 'little women' when he comes home. This heart-warming story of family life has been popular for more than a hundred years. CEFR B1-B2 Word count 14,920