Library
Free books to read in a language you are learning
Every book here is in the public domain, downloads as an EPUB, and opens in any reader — including this one. They are not chosen for being great literature, though several are. They are chosen for being readable when you are still learning: short chapters, plain vocabulary, and enough momentum to carry you past the words you skip.
Levels are rough guides, not tests. Pick one that looks slightly too easy — coverage matters more than ambition.
Start here
Deliberately easier than you think you need. The first book you finish teaches you more than the three you abandon.
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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The plainest vocabulary on this shelf, and you already know the story from the film — which frees all of your attention for the words.
Download free at Standard Ebooks -
The Call of the Wild
Short, concrete and physical. Almost every noun is something you can picture, which is exactly what makes guessing from context work.
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Anne of Green Gables
Long, but cut into short chapters with a warm, modern voice. Good when you want something to live in for a few weeks rather than finish in one.
Download free at Standard Ebooks
Once you have momentum
Longer sentences, but still built to pull you forward. Momentum is what carries you past the words you decided to skip.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The best structure on this page for a learner: twelve self-contained stories, each about twenty minutes. You finish something every session, which is what keeps people reading.
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The Time Machine
A whole novel in an evening or two. Wells writes clearly and explains his own ideas, so the hard part is the concepts rather than the prose.
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Around the World in Eighty Days
Episodic by design — a new country every few chapters — so putting it down for a week costs you nothing.
Download free at Standard Ebooks
A step up
Where the vocabulary stops being the difficulty and the style starts being it.
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The Great Gatsby
Short, and the prose is genuinely modern — it was written in 1925 but does not read like it. Entered the public domain in 2021.
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The Metamorphosis
Very short, and the sentences are plainer than the reputation suggests. Pairs with the German original below if you want to read the same book twice.
Download free at Standard Ebooks
Not in English
Public-domain translation is the cheapest way into a language: older translations of famous works are usually free in both languages at once.
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Die Verwandlung
The German original of The Metamorphosis above. Read a paragraph in one, then the same paragraph in the other — the most useful twenty minutes available to a German learner.
Download free at Project Gutenberg -
Candide
Thirty short chapters, each a small disaster. The pace does the work that a graded reader usually has to do for you.
Download free at Project Gutenberg
Open one and tap a word
Download any of these as EPUB, import it into ClickBook, and tap a word you do not know. The explanation is written on your phone, in your mother tongue, without a connection.
New to EPUB? Read how to open an EPUB on iPhone and Android, or where to find more free books legally.