Jennifer Bassett

Ideal for elementary learners of English looking to improve or practise their English. The book is filled with useful vocabulary that is carefully graded and easy to understand, it also comes with audio, so that you can listen to the story at the same time as reading.Shirley Homes is a private investigator. She is clever with computers, and knows London like the back of her hand. She laughs when people say, 'Was Sherlock Holmes your grandfather?' Sherlock Holmes, of course, was not a real person, but like Sherlock, Shirley has good eyes, and good ears. And she knows the right questions to ask. And in the Lithuanian Case, the right questions are important. Because Shirley must find a missing person - Carrie Williams, aged fifteen. Where is she? Who is she with?

"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!'" (...)

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. Fear and pain, happiness and sadness belong to us all. 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.

Tom Walsh had a lot to learn about life. He liked travelling, and he was in no hurry. He liked meeting people, anyone and everyone. He liked the two American girls on the train. They were nice and very friendly. They knew a lot of places. Tom thought they were fun. Tom certainly had a lot to learn about life. This is a collection of short stories about adventures on trains. Strange, wonderful, and frightening things can happen on trains - and all of them happen here.

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, plays croquet with the King and Queen of Hearts...

In EDI (the European Department of Intelligence in Brussels) there are some very secret files - the Omega Files. There are strange, surprising, and sometimes horrible stories in these files, but not many people know about them. You never read about them in the newspapers. Hawker and Jude know all about the Omega Files, because they work for EDI. They think fast, they move fast, and they learn some very strange things. They go all over the world, asking difficult questions in dangerous places, but they don't always find the answers.

Factfiles are a sub-series of Bookworms with a non-fiction angle, providing factual information for students who are not so much interested in fiction.

Factfiles" are a sub-series of "Bookworms" with a non-fiction angle, providing factual information for students who are less interested in fiction. Each book focuses on a particular topic such as famous cities, sport, science, the environment and the media.