Level 2

Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories

Edgar Allan Poe

A level 2 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by John Escott. Everybody has bad dreams. Horrible things move towards you in the dark, things you can hear but not see. Then you wake up, in your own warm bed, and turn over to go back to sleep. But imagine that you wake up on a hard floor, in a darkness blacker than the blackest night. You listen to the silence, and smell a wet dead smell. Death is all around you, waiting…In these stories by Edgar Allan Poe, death whispers at you from every dark corner, and fear can send you mad…

Henry VIII and his Six Wives

Janet Hardy-Gould

A level 2 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Written for Learners of English by Janet Hardy-Gould. There were six of them – three Katherines, two Annes, and a Jane. One of them was the King’s wife for twenty-four years, another for only a year and a half. One died, two were divorced, and two were beheaded. It was a dangerous, uncertain life. After the King’s death in 1547, his sixth wife finds a box of old letters – one from each of the first five wives. They are sad, angry, frightened letters. They tell the story of what it was like to be the wife of Henry VIII of England.