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Witches are dangerous. They can kill you with a look, or a word. They can send their friend the Devil after you in the shape of a dog or a cat. They can make a clay picture of you, then break it… and a few weeks later you are dead. Today, of course, most people don’t believe in witches. But in 1612 everybody was afraid of them. Young Jennet Device in Lancashire knew a lot about them because she lived with the Witches of Pendle. They were her family…

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Everybody took photos of Prince William when he first arrived at the University of St Andrews. Crowds of photographers came to the little Scottish town next to the sea and took pictures of this new student – the nineteen- year-old grandson of the Queen of England. But nobody photographed Kate Middleton on her first day at the university. She moved in quietly, ready to begin her studies in Art History. She was just an ordinary student with an ordinary future in front of her. Or was she?

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A beautiful young Indian girl, and a brave Englishman. Black eyes, and blue eyes. A friendly smile, a laugh, a look of love… But this is North America in 1607, and love is not easy. The girl is the daughter of King Powhatan, and the Englishman is a white man. And the Indians of Virginia do not want the white men in their beautiful country. This is the famous story of Pocahontas, and her love for the Englishman John Smith.

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England and Scotland in the 1500s. Two famous queens – Mary, the Catholic Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I, the Protestant Queen of England. It was an exciting and a dangerous time to be alive, and to be a queen. Mary was Queen of Scotland when she was one week old. At sixteen, she was also Queen of France. She was tall and beautiful, with red-gold hair. Many men loved her and died for her. But she also had many enemies – men who said: ‘The death of Mary is the life of Elizabeth.’

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This is the story of Hachiko, Japan’s most famous dog. Life is good for Hachiko, until one day everything changes.

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He is not beautiful. His mother does not want him, children run away for him. People laugh at him, and call him ‘The Elephant Man’. Then someone speaks to him – and listens to him! At the age of 27, Joseph Merrick finds a friend for the first time in his life. This is a true and tragic story. It is also a famous film.

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In the summer of 1910, a race began. A race to be the first man at the South Pole, in Antarctica. Robert Falcon Scott, an Englishman, left London in his ship, the Terra Nova, and began the long journey south. Five days later, another ship also began to travel south. And on this ship was Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian. But Antarctica is the coldest place on earth, and it is a long, hard journey over the ice to the South Pole. Some of the travellers never returned home. This is the story of Scott and Amundsen, and of their famous and dangerous race.

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This is Tutankhamun’s story, told by his friend Aziru. Aziru goes to live in the Pharaoh’s palace as a young boy, and he and Tutankhamun are soon great friends. But there are powerful men in the palace, and Aziru is often afraid for his friend too.

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When Lord Asano drew his sword on Lord Kira one spring day in 1701, it began a story that is now a national legend in Japan. Lord Kira lived, but Lord Asano died, and after his death, his samurai became ronin, samurai without a master. And so began their long plan for revenge on Kira. Their loyalty to their dead master made him famous, and people in Japan remember them to this day. The story of the 47 ronin has been told and retold for 300 years – in plays, novels, and films. A major Hollywood film was made about the forty-seven ronin in 2013.

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Sarah Harland is nineteen, and she is in prison. At the airport, they find heroin in her bag. So, now she is waiting to go to court. If the court decides that it was her heroin, then she must die. She says she did not do it. But if she did not, who did? Only two people can help Sarah: her mother, and an old boyfriend who does not love her now. Can they work together? Can they find the real criminal before it is too late?

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The President is dead! 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? Long live the President!

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Nick Lortz is sitting outside a café in Whistler, a village in the Canadian mountains, when a stranger comes and sits next to him. She’s young, pretty, and has a beautiful smile. Nick is happy to sit and talk with her. But why does she call Nick ‘Mr Hollywood’? Why does she give him a big kiss when she leaves? And who is the man at the next table – the man with short white hair? Nick learns the answers to these questions three long days later – in a police station on Vancouver Island.

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Sherlock Holmes is the greatest detective the world has ever seen, and he knows it. As the famous bank-robber, John Clay, says to him, ‘You think of everything, Mr Holmes. You’re very clever.’ People come to him with problems that no one, not even the police, can solve. Holmes sits, and thinks, and smokes his pipe, and in the end he finds the answer. In these plays, based on two of his stories, Holmes, helped by his old friend, Dr Watson, uses his great intelligence to solve two unusual and interesting cases.

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At the start of this play, the court room is full for today’s trial. Two young men, Simon Clark and Dan Smith, stand up. The clerk asks, ‘Are you guilty of the murder of Mary Jones?’ ‘Not guilty!’ they reply. But perhaps they are guilty. The police found the murder weapon in their stolen car, and there was blood on Simon’s face. If the court finds them guilty, they will go to prison for a very long time. Can the lawyers find out the truth, by asking the right questions? Everyone in court wants to know who murdered Mary Jones. You can help to find the answer, too!

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Do you believe in ghosts? Jerry doesn’t. He’s a 19-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 think that he has been there before. And then a girl called Ellen appears… The first of these three original plays is set in the 17th 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.

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What do you do if you have a boring job in a restaurant, serving fast food to people who have no time to eat? What if you dream of travelling to other countries, but your friends just laugh? Do you stay at home with them? Perhaps you hear that someone has bought the last bag of salt in town. Do you buy a bag from him at a high price? Our world is full of these kinds of problems. They make life interesting, and sometimes very funny. These five short plays show people trying to decide what to do in unexpected situations.

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How do you get a licence if you want to keep a monkey? What can you do if your wife has a lover? How can you see into the future? Where can you go for an exciting but cheap holiday somewhere hot and far away? How can you persuade your girlfriend or boyfriend to marry you? The characters in these six original short plays are looking for answers to these questions. While trying to solve their problems, people get into some very funny situations. Each play gives an amusing view of life today, and there is often an unexpected ending.

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Cathy Wilson is driving to Norfolk, to begin her new job with the Harvey family. She is going to look after the two young children, Tim and Susan. Cathy meets the children’s father, and their grandmother, and their aunt. She meets Nick, the farmer who lives across the fields. But she doesn’t meet Miranda, the children’s mother, because Miranda is dead. She died two years ago, and Cathy cannot learn anything about her. Everybody remembers Miranda, but nobody wants to talk about her…

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A woman finds a man on a beach. He is very cold, his clothes are wet, and he cannot speak. The woman phones for help, and an ambulance comes and takes the man to hospital. In hospital they ask the man questions, but he does not answer. He still cannot speak – or does not want to speak. Who is he, this strange man from the sea? What is his name? Where did he come from? And why do they call him the Piano Man?

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This is a collection of stories about adventures on trains. Strange, wonderful, and frightening things can happen on trains – and all of them happen here.

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Alex’s family is always moving from town to town. Then he meets Bella, and everything gets difficult because she wants him to play his music for everyone. And how can he say goodbye to her, when his parents decide to move again?

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Maria misses her family and friends in Pamplona, Spain, but soon she begins to enjoy her English classes in London. She also makes new friends like Emilia and Jack. But does Jack like Maria? And what does Emilia think about Jack?

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Everybody wants to win the lottery. A million pounds, perhaps five million, even ten million. How wonderful! Emma Carter buys a ticket for the lottery every week, and puts the ticket carefully in her bag. She is 73 years old and does not have much money. She would like to visit her son in Australia, but aeroplane tickets are very expensive. Jason Williams buys lottery tickets every week too. But he is not a very nice young man. He steals things. He hits old ladies in the street, snatches their bags, and runs away…

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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 eleventh birthday, something terrible happens, and now Sara has no family, no home, and not a penny in the world…

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Cedric Errol is seven years old. He lives with his mother in a little house in New York. They don’t have much money, but mother and son are very good friends. Cedric is a kind, friendly little boy, and everybody likes him. His father was English, but he is now dead, and Cedric and his mother are alone in the world. But one day a lawyer arrives from England with some very surprising news about Cedric’s grandfather.

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France, 1815. Jean Valjean leaves prison after 19 years. These are dangerous and troubled times, and life is hard. Valjean must begin a new life, but how can he escape his past, and his enemy, Inspector Javert? This story for Bookworms is loosely based on the famous novel Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, one of France’s greatest writers. The novel was written in 1862, and the story has been retold many times – in a musical, in plays for radio and theatre, and in more than 50 films for television and cinema.

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In a house in Oxford, three people are having breakfast – Carol, her husband Jan, and his father Josef. They are talking about Prague, because Carol wants them all to go there for Christmas. Josef was born in Prague, but he left his home city when he was a young man. He is an old man now, and he would like to see Prague again before he dies. But he is afraid. He still remembers another Christmas in Prague, many long years ago – a Christmas that changed his life for ever…

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Luke is a good-looking, young man, but he’s not very clever with words. Gemma is clever with words, but what does she want? Lucy and Becky are good friends, but what about Sam? He makes wonderful cakes, but does he make mistakes too? Nina and Dragan are in love, so deeply in love, but they live in the wrong place, at the wrong time… All love stories have moments of happiness, pain, misunderstanding, laughter, and sometimes great sadness. But love will nearly always find a way…

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Dorothy lives in Kansas, USA, but one day a cyclone blows her and her house to a strange country called Oz. There, Dorothy makes friends with the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. But she wants to go home to Kansas. Only one person can help her, and that is the country’s famous Wizard. So Dorothy and her friends take the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, to find the Wizard of Oz…

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It is the year 2522, and the planet Earth is dying. The Artificial Ozone Layer is only 300 years old, but it is breaking up. Now the sun is burning down on Earth. There is no water. Without water, nothing can live. Trees die, plants die, animals die, people die… In a colony under the moon, people wait for news – news from home, news from the planet Earth. And in a spaceship high above Earth, a young man watches numbers on a computer screen. The numbers tell a story, and the young man is afraid. The planet Earth is burning, burning…

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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… But who has actually seen him?

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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…

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Outside, the night is cold and wet. Inside, the White family sits and waits. Where is their visitor? There is a knock at the door. A man is standing outside in the dark. Their visitor has arrived. The visitor waits. He has been in India for many years. What has he got? He has brought the hand of a small, dead animal – a monkey’s paw. Outside, in the dark, the visitor smiles and waits for the door to open.

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In a city in Arabia there lives a boy called Aladdin. He is poor and often hungry, but one day he finds an old lamp. When he rubs the lamp, smoke comes out of it, and then out of the smoke comes a magical jinnee. With the jinnee’s help, Aladdin is soon rich, with gold and jewels and many fine things. But can he win the love of the Sultan’s daughter, the beautiful Princess Badr-al-Budur?

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‘The bride wore a long white dress, with flowers in her hair. After the wedding, there was a party, and people gave presents to the bride and groom.’ This wedding was nearly two thousand years ago, in Rome. Some things don’t change. But some things do. Today you can have a wedding on a mountain, or under the sea, or ‘Elvis’ can sing for you. And different things happen in different places. Little birds made of paper, small trees, money in the bride’s shoe, and lots of noise – they are all important for weddings somewhere. Welcome to the wonderful world of weddings!

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In 2008, Usain Bolt became the fastest man in the world. He won three gold medals at the Beijing Olympic Games that year – and he did it again in 2012, and in 2016. So how did a boy from a little Jamaican village become the world’s greatest athlete? And why do his fans love him so much?

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‘It’s a good place for gold,’ said people in the 1840s, and they came from all over the world. ‘It’s a good place for a prison,’ said the US government in the 1920s, and they put Al Capone there on the island of Alcatraz. ‘It’s a good place for love,’ said the hippies in the 1960s, and they put flowers in their hair and came to Haight Ashbury. And San Francisco is still a good place – to take one hundred photographs, or see the Chinatown parade, or just to sit in a coffee shop and be in this interesting, different city…

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Come with us to London – a city as old as the Romans, and as new as the 21st century. There are places to go – from Oxford Street to Westminster Abbey, from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre to Wimbledon Tennis Club. And things to do – ride on the London Eye, visit the markets, go to the theatre, run in the London Marathon. Big, beautiful, noisy, exciting – that’s London.

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‘One day, I’m going to be famous,’ John Lennon said when he was young – and soon he was! His band The Beatles became one of the greatest in the world, and people loved them. After John Lennon went solo, he wrote some of the most important songs of all time. He was a family man and a peace protestor – he wanted to change the world. But one autumn day, four gun shots rang out across New York, and took away that dream for ever…

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What is Japan? It is everything new and modern: the Tokyo Sky Tree, 634 metres high; amazing cameras and phones; karaoke and manga; trains going past at 300 kilometres an hour. And it is everything ancient too: beautiful palaces; high mountains and hot springs; cherry blossom in the spring; quiet gardens with water and trees. Here the past meets the future all the time. From sumo wrestlers to robots, Japan has something amazing for everybody.

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Hollywood – nine big white letters against the Hollywood Hills. Every year millions of people come from all over the world and look up at this famous sign. Why do they come? They come to see the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and to see the hand and foot prints outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. They come to visit Universal Studios, and perhaps to see a movie star or two. Most of all, they come to be in the most famous place in movie history – exciting, wonderful Hollywood!

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25 million people come to England every year, and some never go out of London. But England is full of interesting places to visit and things to do. There are big noisy cities with great shops and theatres, and quiet little villages. You can visit old castles and beautiful churches – or go to festivals with music 24 hours a day. You can have an English afternoon tea, walk on long white beaches, watch a great game of football, or visit a country house. Yes, England has something for everybody – what has it got for you?

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Everyone knows about Brazil’s beautiful beaches, the Amazon rainforest, and the wonderful Carnival of Rio de Janeiro. But there is a lot more to Brazil than this: here you can find interesting old towns, modern cities, and thousands of different kinds of animals and plants. It is home to world- famous artists and writers, and international sporting events like the World Cup and the Olympics, too. What other interesting things can you see here? Why is there music and dancing on its streets? And who are the people of this amazing country?

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Some sisters are good friends, some are not. Sometimes there is more hate in a family than there is love. Karin is beautiful and has lots of men friends, but she can be very unkind to her sister Marcia. Perhaps when they were small, there was love between them, but that was a long time ago. They say that everybody has one crime in them. Perhaps they only take an umbrella that does not belong to them. Perhaps they steal from a shop, perhaps they get angry and hit someone, perhaps they kill…

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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?

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Shirley Homes, private investigator. Like Sherlock Holmes one hundred years ago, she lives in London, enjoys working on difficult cases, and has some helpful friends. She understands people, is a good listener, and of course, she is clever with computers. In today’s world that is important, because a lot of crime is cyber crime. In this second Shirley Homes detective story, Shirley must catch a cyber thief. But how? You can’t see a cyber thief, you can’t hear a cyber thief. Only the computer knows, and the computer isn’t talking…

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Horseracing is the sport of kings, perhaps because racehorses are very expensive animals. But when they win, they can make a lot of money for the owners, for the trainers, and for the people who put bets on them. Silver Blaze is a young horse, but already the winner of many races. One night he disappears, and someone kills his trainer. The police want the killer, and the owner wants his horse, but they can’t find them. So what do they do? They write to 221B Baker Street, of course – to ask for the help of the great detective, Sherlock Holmes.

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Dr Huxtable has a school for boys in the north of England. When the Duke of Holdernesse decides to send his young son there, that is good news for the school. The Duke is a very important person, and Dr Huxtable is happy to have his son in the school. But two weeks later Dr Huxtable is the unhappiest man in England. Why? And why does he take the train down to London and go to Baker Street? Why does he need the help of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes? Because someone has kidnapped the Duke’s son…

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It is Molly Clarkson’s fiftieth birthday. She is having a party. She is rich, but she is having a small party – only four people. Four people, however, who all need the same thing: they need her money. She will not give them the money, so they are waiting for her to die. And there are other people who are also waiting for her to die. But one person can’t wait. And so, on her fiftieth birthday, Molly Clarkson is going to die.

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A woman and a man… words of love whispered on a summer night. Later, there is a child, but no wedding-ring. And then the man leaves the first woman, finds a younger woman, marries her… It’s an old story. Yes, it’s an old, old story. It happens all the time – today, tomorrow, one hundred years ago. People don’t change. But this story, set among the green hills of southern England, has something different about it. Perhaps it is only a dream, or perhaps it is magic – a kind of strange dark magic that begins in the world of dreams and phantoms…

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Tom Sawyer does not like school. He does not like work, and he never wants to get out of bed in the morning. But he likes swimming, fishing and having adventures with his friends. And he has a lot of adventures. One night, he and his friend Huck Finn go to the graveyard to look for ghosts. They don’t see any ghosts that night. They see something worse than a ghost – much, much worse…