Shakespeare's classic play explores the eternal themes of love and hate, mercy and justice, with parallel stories centred on the moneylender, Shylock, and the lovers, Portia and Bassanio. Shylock's angry insistence on the repayment of his debt from Bassanio ends in the Venetian courts where he demands his pound of flesh. Portia meanwhile, a wealthy young Venetian woman, must marry one of her many suitors. Her late father?s will has set the challenge...

Jean Valjean is free at last after nineteen years in prison. Cold and hungry, he is rejected by everyone he meets. But Jean's life is changed forever when he discovers love. He spends the rest of his life helping people, like himself, who have been victims of poverty and social injustice - 'les miserables'. --Cover.

Contemporary / British English The Russian Revolution -- four young people, Yury, Tonya, Lara and Pasha, find love and lose it in this extraordinary time. Their heart-breaking stories make Dr Zhivago one of the greatest romantic books, and films, of the century.

Tom Sawyer and his friends play truant from school and set off for an island near their home town. Here they decide to play pirates but their game is interrupted when they witness a murder. Tom has to grow up very quickly and do the right thing.

Michael Jordan, the Chicago Bulls number 23, is very famous. And he can fly! Maybe he is the best basketball player of all time. But where did he come from? How did he start in basketball? Read about his life and about his love of basketball.

Classic / British English Winston Smith lives in a society where the government controls people's lives every second of the day. Alone in his small, one-room apartment, Winston dreams of a better life. Is freedom from this life of suffering possible? There must be something that the Party cannot control -- something like love, perhaps?