Graded Readers

Short stories written for your level, from A1 Beginner to C2 Proficiency. Read them free, tap a key word for its meaning, then check your understanding with a quick quiz.

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Every story is original and written for one CEFR level, so the grammar and vocabulary match what you are learning now.

A1 Beginner

A1Animals3 min
Every evening a black cat sits at Tom's door. Tom lives alone and does not like cats. Or does he?
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A1Friendship3 min
Sara's new neighbour plays loud music every night. Sara is angry, so she knocks on his door. What she finds there changes everything.
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A1Family3 min
Every Saturday, Ana goes to the market with her grandfather. He knows everyone there, and today he has a special plan.
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A1City life4 min
Ben finds a red umbrella on the train. There is a name inside it, and Ben wants to give it back. But the city is very big.
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A1Everyday life3 min
It is Lina's first day at a new job, and she gets on the wrong bus. Can a friendly driver help her get there on time?
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A2 Elementary

A2Mystery3 min
While they repair an old house, Nadia and her dad find a letter hidden in a wall since 1962. Who wrote it, and who was it for?
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A2Work4 min
Leo's first day as a barista is a disaster: wrong orders, spilled milk and a very difficult customer. Can he finish the day with a smile?
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A2Family4 min
When heavy snow closes the school, two brothers plan a perfect lazy day. But their neighbour needs help, and the day goes very differently.
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A2Everyday life3 min
At a summer music festival, Maya loses her phone with all her photos and her ticket home. Then a stranger sends her a message.
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A2Adventure4 min
Three friends go walking in the mountains, but thick fog hides the path. Their phones have no signal, and night is coming. Then a dog appears.
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B1 Intermediate

B1Adventure5 min
Four teenagers on a camping trip discover that their phones are useless on the island. When their canoe drifts away, they have to find their way back with nothing but a paper map and each other.
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B1Life4 min
Kai has failed his driving test twice, and his friends have stopped asking about it. Help comes from someone he never expected: his eighty-year-old grandmother.
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B1Work4 min
Priya has prepared for weeks for the most important job interview of her life. Then the lift stops between two floors, and she is trapped with a stranger who is having a very bad day.
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B1Mystery4 min
On the night train to Vienna, Elena shares a compartment with a silent man and a strange black case that he never lets out of his sight. By morning, she is sure he is hiding something.
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B1Family4 min
After her grandmother dies, Sofia tries to cook the soup that held her family together for fifty years. There is just one problem: the recipe was never written down.
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B2 Upper Intermediate

B2Modern life5 min
Daniel's whole life as a delivery rider is ruled by an app and its rating system. One rainy night, a customer gives him a reason to switch it off.
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B2Comedy5 min
Four strangers share a flat in London, and the only way they communicate is through increasingly passive-aggressive notes on the fridge. Then the notes start to change.
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B2Work5 min
Amira is a hospital interpreter. When an elderly patient and a busy doctor seem to understand each other perfectly, she notices that one small word means something completely different to each of them.
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B2Coming of age5 min
Lucas arrives in a small Scottish town from São Paulo, convinced that his exchange year was a terrible mistake. It takes a cold winter, a borrowed fiddle and a very loud dance to change his mind.
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B2Drama6 min
After thirty-one years, Ewan's lighthouse is being automated, and tonight is his last shift. Then a storm arrives, and the new system fails.
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C1 Advanced

C1Literary6 min
When a reader discovers that a passage in Joanna Price's prize-winning novel is almost identical to a forgotten story from 1974, the novelist is accused of plagiarism. The truth turns out to be stranger and sadder than theft.
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C1Family drama6 min
Two brothers who haven't spoken properly in nine years walk out across the sands to scatter their father's ashes. When the tide turns faster than expected, they are stranded together with everything they have never said.
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C1Drama6 min
Every night at 3 a.m., a patient who cannot sleep rings the bell, and every night, the young nurse on duty sits with him. Their conversations become the most honest hours of her week.
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C1Mystery6 min
Archivist Ruth Adeyemi is cataloguing a box of donated letters when she notices a single correction in a ledger from 1919. It overturns a story one local family has told with pride for a hundred years.
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C1Business6 min
Nadia has ten minutes to convince three investors to fund the app she has spent two years building. Halfway through her presentation, she realises exactly what the investors want it to become, and she has to decide what she is prepared to sell.
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C2 Proficiency

C2Literary7 min
Every summer of her childhood, Leah stayed with a grandmother who had removed every mirror from her house. Years later, clearing out that house, she finally understands why.
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C2Science7 min
A young radio astronomer detects a mysterious, repeating burst of radio waves that nobody can explain. As excitement grows, she must decide how much she wants the answer to be extraordinary.
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C2Legal drama7 min
A court interpreter realises that a single word in a witness's evidence carries two meanings, and that the jury will hear only one of them. Her duty is to be invisible, but staying invisible may decide the verdict.
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C2Mystery7 min
A meticulous mapmaker finds a village on her company's maps that does not exist, invented decades ago to catch copycats. Then she drives there, and discovers that it does.
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C2Drama7 min
For three years, Owen has learned every line of a role he never expects to play. When the star collapses an hour before curtain-up, he finally gets his chance, and discovers that success feels nothing like he imagined.
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How to get the most from a graded reader

Read for the story first. Try not to stop at every new word. If you can follow what happens, the level is right for you.

Then go back for the words. The underlined words are the key vocabulary. Tap one to see what it means in the story, and find them all in the list at the end.

Check yourself. Each story ends with five questions. If you are signed in, your mistakes go to your notebook so you can review them later.

Listen while you read. With Pro, every story is narrated and each sentence lights up as you hear it. You can also slow the voice down, print the story with an answer key and add its words to your word review.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a graded reader?

A graded reader is a story written for learners at one level. The vocabulary, grammar and length are controlled, so you can read a whole story without a dictionary and still meet new words.

Which level should I choose?

Start with the level you are studying now. If you understand almost everything without effort, move up a level. If you have to stop in every sentence, try the level below. Not sure of your level? Take the free English level test.

Are the stories free?

Yes. Every story and its quiz are free to read. Pro members can also listen to each story with sentence highlighting, print it with an answer key and save its words to word review.

How long are the stories?

A1 stories are about 200 words and take two or three minutes to read. C2 stories are over 1,000 words. Each story shows its word count and reading time at the top.

How often are new stories added?

We add new stories in batches, a few for every level at a time. They appear on this page as soon as they are published.

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