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Oxford University Press
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Arnold Bennett is famous for his stories about the Five Towns and the people who live there. They look and sound just like other people, and, like all of us, sometimes they do some very strange things. There's Sir Jee, who is a rich businessman. So why is he making a plan with a burglar? Then there is Toby Hall. Why does he decide to visit Number 11 Child Row, and who does he find there? And then there are the Hessian brothers and Annie Emery — and the little problem of twelve thousand pounds. |
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Mr James Conway wants to make money. He wants to build new houses and shops — and he wants to build them on an old graveyard, on the island of Haiti. There is only one old man who still visits the graveyard; and Mr Conway is not afraid of one old man. But the old man has friends — friends in the graveyard, friends who lie dead, under the ground. And when Mr Conway starts to build his houses, he makes the terrible mistake of disturbing the sleep of the dead... |
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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. |
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Tony Kytes is a favourite with the girls but he's not terribly clever. If you meet an old girlfriend and she asks for a ride home in your wagon, do you say yes? And then if you meet the girl you are planning to marry, what do you do? Very soon, Tony is in a great muddle, and does not know how to escape from it. These stories are set in an English country village of the nineteenth century, but Hardy's tales of mistakes and muddles and marriages belong in any place, at any time. |
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It is hay-making time on the Wookey farm. Two brothers are building the haystack, but thinking about other things — about young women, and love. There are angry words, and then a fight between the brothers. But the work goes on, visitors come and go, and the long hot summer day slowly turns to evening. Then the sun goes down, covering the world with a carpet of darkness. From the hedges around the hayfield comes the rich, sweet smell of wild flowers, and the hay will make a fine, soft bed... |
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From Botswana to New Zealand, from Jamaica to Nigeria, from Uganda to Malaysia, from India to South Africa, these moving stories show us that the human heart is the same in every place. Children, wives, mothers, husbands, friends all have the same feelings of fear and pain, happiness and sadness. These eight stories were winning entries in the 2004 Commonwealth Short Story Competition. The writers are Sefi Atta, Adrienne M. Frater, Lauri Kubuitsile, Erica N. Robinson, Jackee Budesta Batanda, Janet Tay Hui Ching, Anuradha Muralidharan, and Tod Collins. |
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Good luck in Malaysia, bad news in New Zealand, a chicken and a jug of cider in Britain, a goat and a pumpkin in India, fun and games in a cyber cafe in Nigeria... The countries change, but people's lives are always strange and wonderful in any place. Bookworms World Stories collect stories written in English from around the world. These stories are by Shahana Chaudhury, Mary McCluskey, Nandita Ray, Suchitra Karthik Kumar, Susan Costello, Anthony C. Diala, Preeta Krishna, and Folakemi Emem-Akpan. |
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Then a letter came for Aloo from a famous college in America. They offered him a place... a place with a scholarship. Aloo could not believe it at first. He read the letter again and again. Aloo is very happy, but soon he finds that it is not so easy. He will need money to live on, money for his plane ticket... And then there is Mother... The stories in this volume of World Stories come from Malawi, South Africa, and Tanzania by African writers Steve Chimombo, Farida Karodia, and M. G. Vassanji. |
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When it came to football, Billy was different. Black hands grab the ball. Black feet kick the ball. Black hopes rise up with the ball to the sickly white sky. No one can stop him now. He forgets about the river, and the people of his blood... But who can forget their own past? Billy finds that the ties which hold him to the people of his blood are strong indeed... The stories in this volume of World Stories are by Australian writers Mena Abdullah & Ray Mathew, Judith Wright, Archie Weller, Dal Stivens, David Malouf, Marion Halligan. |
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At home we started with an innocent life. Walking home from village dances across pale wet fields, looking at birds on the moonlit lake, playing a tune across the water in the early morning with no other sound in the clear cold air. Innocence and experience, loss and longing, humour and sadness run hand in hand through these stories. The stories in this volume of World Stories are by Irish writers Brian Friel, Edna O'Brien, William Trevor, Lorcan Byrne, Frank O'Connor, Claire Keegan, Eamonn Sweeney, and Somerville & Ross. |
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My brother preferred being with mother and me. He used to help us prepare vegetables in the kitchen or make the bread. But what he liked best was listening to my mother's stories. But those childhood days are long gone, and now a great distance divides sister and brother, children and mother. The stories in this volume of World Stories come from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The writers are Romesh Gunesekera, M. Athar Tahir, Chitra Divakaruni, Anu Kumar, Anne Ranasinghe, Ruskin Bond, Anita Desai, Vijita Fernando, and Amara Bavani Dev. |
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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. |
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He smiled, showing teeth yellow from cigarette smoke. He looked at his desk diary, then at her papers again. Mmm... a hundred pesos a month, Why, that's one thousand two hundred pesos a year. Surely, you can afford to buy me a forty-peso dinner! How can Marina say no? How can she refuse the Chief's next request? He is an evil man, but she needs her promotion... |
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When men find gold in the frozen north of Canada, they need dogs — big, strong dogs to pull the sledges on the long journeys to and from the gold mines. Buck is stolen from his home in the south and sold as a sledge-dog. He has to learn a new way of life — how to work in harness, how to stay alive in the ice and the snow... and how to fight. Because when a dog falls down in a fight, he never gets up again. |
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The job was too good. There had to be a problem — and there was. 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. |
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Christmas is humbug, Scrooge says — just a time when you find yourself a year older and not a penny richer. The only thing that matters to Scrooge is business, and making money. But on Christmas Eve three spirits come to visit him. They take him travelling on the wings of the night to see the shadows of Christmas past, present, and future — and Scrooge learns a lesson that he will never forget. |
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Victor Frankenstein thinks he has found the secret of life. He takes parts from dead people and builds a new man. But this monster is so big and frightening that everyone runs away from him — even Frankenstein himself! The monster is like an enormous baby who needs love. But nobody gives him love, and soon he learns to hate. And, because he is so strong, the next thing he learns is how to kill... |
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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... |
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This is a love story you won't forget. Oliver Barrett meets Jenny Cavilleri. He plays sports, she plays music. He's rich, and she's poor. They argue, and they fight, and they fall in love. So they get married, and make a home together. They work hard, they enjoy life, they make plans for the future. Then they learn that they don't have much time left. Their story has made people laugh, and cry, all over the world. |
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The 'Oxford Bookworms Library' extends the range of activities and teaching support of 'Oxford Bookworms' and includes in each book an activities section of Before Reading, While Reading and After Reading exercises. The six stages offer stories at different levels of ability. |
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