Books in Oxford Bookworms Library. Stage 4, Fantasy series

Do you believe in ghosts? Jerry doesn't. He's a nineteen-year-old American, who just wants a good holiday with his friend, Brad. They are travelling round the north of England by bicycle. But strange things begin to happen in the small hotel where they are staying. First, Brad seems to thinkthat he has been there before. And then a girl called Ellen appears . . .The first of these three original plays is set in the seventeenth century, and the other two take place in modern times. In each play, a ghost comes back from the dead to change the lives of living people.

'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 acold, wet morning.This famous book has made people laugh all over the world for a hundred years . . . and they are still laughing.

In the second century AD, when the Ninth Roman Legion marched into the mists of northern Britain, not one man came back. Four thousand men disappeared, and the Eagle, the symbol of the Legion's honour, was lost.Years later there is a story that the Eagle has been seen again. So Marcus Aquila, whose father disappeared with the Ninth, travels north, to find the Eagle and bring it back, and to learn how his father died. But the tribes of the north are wild and dangerous, and they hate the Romans . . .

Who wants to live in a house, wear clean clothes, be good, and go to school every day? Not young Huckleberry Finn, that's for sure.So Huck runs away, and is soon floating down the great Mississippi River on a raft. With him is Jim, a black slave who is also running away. But life is not always easy for the two friends.And there's 300 dollars waiting for anyone who catches poor Jim...

Richard Walton is in trouble again. He has lost his job, and he has borrowed money from his sister, Jennifer - again. And now he has disappeared. Jennifer is looking for him, and so are the police. They both have some questions that they want to ask him.(br /)How did he lose his job? Why didhe fly to Frankfurt? Who gave his girlfriend those very expensive gold ear-rings?(br /)Only Richard can answer these questions. But nobody can find Richard.

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 hasblack holes for eyes. Everybody is afraid of the Phantom - the singers, the dancers, the directors, the stage workers . . .But who has actually seen him?

'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 . . .

In a gloomy, neglected house Miss Havisham sits, as she has sat year after year, in a wedding dress and veil that were once white, and are now faded and yellow with age. Her face is like a death's head; her dark eyes burn with bitterness and hate. By her side sits a proud and beautiful girl,and in front of her, trembling with fear in his thick country boots, stands young Pip.Miss Havisham stares at Pip coldly, and murmurs to the girl at her side: 'Break his heart, Estella. Break his heart!'

'The moment I first met you, I noticed your pride, your sense of superiority, and your selfish disdain for the feelings of others. You are the last man in the world whom I could ever be persuaded to marry,' said Elizabeth Bennet.And so Elizabeth rejects the proud Mr Darcy. Can nothing overcome her prejudice against him? And what of the other Bennet girls - their fortunes, and misfortunes, in the business of getting husbands?This famous novel by Jane Austen is full of wise and humorous observation of the people and manners of her times.

'I turned on the light, but there was nobody there. Then I saw something in the corner that made my blood turn cold. Scudder was lying on his back. There was a long knife through his heart, pinning him to the floor.'Soon Richard Hannay is running for his life across the hills of Scotland. The police are chasing him for a murder he did not do, and another, more dangerous enemy is chasing him as well - the mysterious 'Black Stone'. Who are these people? And why do they want Hannay dead?

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.