Résultats de "Jennifer Bassett" dans Toutes les catégories

Life is always hard for the poor, in any place and at any time. Ethan Frome is a farmer in Massachusetts. He works long hours every day, but his farm makes very little money. His wife, Zeena, is a thin, grey woman, always complaining, and only interested in her own ill health. Then Mattie Silver, a young cousin, comes to live with the Fromes, to help Zeena and do the housework. Her bright smile and laughing voice bring light and hope into the Fromes’ house - and into Ethan’s lonely life.

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.

I like work. I find it interesting . . . I can sit and look at it for hours. ’With ideas like this, perhaps it is not a good idea to spend a holiday taking a boat trip up the River Thames. But this is what the three friends - and Montmorency the dog - decide to do. It is the sort of holiday that is fun to remember afterwards, but not so much fun to wake up to early on a cold, wet morning. This famous book has made people laugh all over the world for a hundred years . . . and they are still laughing.

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?

It is 1880, in the Opera House in Paris. Everybody is talking about the Phantom of the Opera, the ghost that lives somewhere under the Opera House. The Phantom is a man in black clothes. He is a body without a head, he is a head without a body. He has a yellow face, he has no nose, he has black holes for eyes. Everybody is afraid of the Phantom – the singers, the dancers, the directors, the stage workers.

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.

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.

Little Mary Lennox is a bad-tempered, disagreeable child. When her parents die in India, she is sent back to England to live with her uncle in a big, lonely, old house. There is nothing to do all day except walk in the gardens – and watch the robin flying over the high walls of the secret garden . . . which has been locked for ten years. And no one has the key. An Oxford Bookworms Library reader for learners of English, adapted from the Frances Hodgson Burnett original by Clare West.

Sara Crewe is a very rich little girl. She first comes to England when she is seven, and her father takes her to Miss Minchin’s school in London. Then he goes back to his work in India. Sara is very sad at first, but she soon makes friends at school. But on her 11th birthday, something terrible happens, and now Sara has no family, no home, and not a penny in the world.

In the mountains of Transylvania there stands a castle. It is the home of Count Dracula – a dark, lonely place, and at night the wolves howl around the walls. In the year 1875 Jonathan Harker comes from England to do business with the Count. But Jonathan does not feel comfortable at Castle Dracula. Strange things happen at night, and very soon, he begins to feel afraid. And he is right to be afraid, because Count Dracula is one of the Un-Dead – a vampire that drinks the blood of living people.

"We have to leave our house in London," Mother said to the children. "We’re going to live in the country, in a little house near a railway line." And so begins a new life for Roberta, Peter, and Phyllis. They become the railway children - they know all the trains, Perks the station porter is their best friend, and they have many adventures on the railway line. But why has their father had to go away? Where is he, and will he ever come back?

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....

When Black Beauty is trained to carry a rider on his back, or to pull a carriage behind him, he finds it hard at first. But he is lucky - his first home is a good one, where his owners are kind people, who would never be cruel to a horse. But in the 19th century many people were cruel to their horses, whipping them and beating them, and using them like machines until they dropped dead. Black Beauty soon finds this out, and as he describes his life, he has many terrible stories to tell.

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 15 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. An Oxford Bookworms Library reader for learners of English, adapted from the Jonathan Swift original by Clare West.

Dartmoor. A wild, wet place in the south-west of England. A place where it is easy to get lost, and to fall into the soft green earth which can pull the strongest man down to his death. A man is running for his life. Behind him comes an enormous dog - a dog from his worst dreams, a dog from hell. Between him and a terrible death stands only one person - the greatest detective of all time, Sherlock Holmes.

I wish I could get through into looking-glass house,’ Alice said. ’Let’s pretend that the glass has gone soft and . . . Why, I do believe it has! It’s turning into a kind of cloud!’ A moment later Alice is inside the looking-glass world. There she finds herself part of a great game of chess, travelling through forests and jumping across brooks. The chess pieces talk and argue with her, give orders and repeat poems . . .It is the strangest dream that anyone ever had...

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. An Oxford Bookworms Library reader for learners of English.

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?

A man is running in the night. He is afraid and needs to rest. But there are people behind him - people with lights, and dogs, and guns.A man is standing in front of a desk. His boss is very angry, and the man is tired and needs to sleep. But first he must find the other man, and bring him back - dead or alive.Two men: the hunter and the hunted. Which will win and which will lose?

Adapted from the classic by Lewis Carroll.... There, on top of the mushroom, was a large caterpillar, smoking a pipe. After a while the Caterpillar took the pipe out of its mouth and said to Alice in a slow, sleepy voice, "Who are you?" What strange things happen when Alice falls down the rabbit-hole and into Wonderland! She has conversations with the Caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat, goes to the Mad Hatter’s tea party, and plays croquet with the King and Queen of Hearts.