Category: Audiobooks

Reading or listening to stories in English is a great way to improve in language. Stories it is advisable to choose those that are designed for learning English and which use a simplified dictionary.

VOA Learning English (American English)

On the web VOA we find spoken stories of famous authors in a simplified and abbreviated form.

• VOA Learning English: American Stories – voanews.com

Collections of English Stories with Subtitles

• ENGLISH CRUNCH,
• English Stories Collection,
• English: Practice & Test,
• Learn English Through Story,
• Learn English Through Story with Subtitles.

ELT (English Language Teaching) books

Books marked as ELT are specially written for English students.

Beginner Level

• The House On The Hill by Elizabeth Laird.

Elementary Level

• The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler (ELT level 2).

Pre-intermediate Level

• Forrest Gump (ELT level 3).

Intermediate Level

• The Woman Who Disappeared by Philip Prowse (level 4).

Favorite Stories

• World of Wonders by Robertson Davies,
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.

English Fairy Tales and Stories for Kids

• Free Online Stories for Kids | Short Stories for Kids in English,
• Storynory – storynory.com – original stories, classic fairy tales for kids, stories and poems by classic authors.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Text and audio:	PublicAudioLibrary – youtube.com, Lit2Go.
Text:	Project Gutenberg – text
Audio:	LibriVox, Archive – audio, Greatest AudioBooks – youtube.com.
Search:	YouTube, Google.
Book info:	Wikipedia – book info
Readability:	Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level: 5.5–6 grade
Category:	Young adult
Genre:	Fantasy

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Text and audio:	Lit2Go
Text:	Project Gutenberg – text
Audio:	LibriVox, Archive – audio, Greatest AudioBooks.
Book info:	Wikipedia – book info
Readability:	Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level: 4.5–6 grade
Category:	Young adult
Genre:	Adventure

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

Text:	Project Gutenberg – text.
Audio:	LibriVox, Archive – audio, Greatest AudioBooks.
Book info:	Wikipedia – book info
Readability:	Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level: 7 grade
Category:
Genre:	Nonfiction

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

Text and audio:	Lit2Go
Text:	Project Gutenberg – text
Audio:	LibriVox, Archive – audio, Greatest AudioBooks.
Book info:	Wikipedia – book info
Readability:	Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level: 6.1 grade
Category:
Genre:	Mystery

Moby Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville

Text and audio:	Lit2Go
Text:	Project Gutenberg – text
Audio:	LibriVox, Archive – audio, Audiobooks Unleashed.
Book info:	Wikipedia – book info
Readability:	Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level: 9.8–10 grade
Category:	Fiction
Genre:	Adventure

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Text and audio:	Lit2Go
Text:	Project Gutenberg – text
Audio:	LibriVox, Archive – audio, Greatest AudioBooks.
Book info:	Wikipedia – book info
Readability:	Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level: 7–10 grade
Category:	Young adult
Genre:	Adventure

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Text and audio:	Lit2Go
Text:	Project Gutenberg – text
Audio:	LibriVox, Archive – audio, Greatest AudioBooks.
Book info:	Wikipedia – book info
Readability:	Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level: 9.5–10 grade
Category:	Fiction
Genre:	Romance

The originals of these books should be under Public domain license. The Gutenberg project makes many books that are public domain available online as e-books. Be careful, the copyright expiration under Public domain may vary by country and derivative works may be protected by copyright law.

• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll,
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain,
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu,
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan,
• Moby Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville,
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain,
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.

The Flesch–Kincaid readability tests are tests that show how difficult it is to understand the English text. A lower school level indicates that the text is easier to read.

Popular Audiobooks Libraries

• Free eBooks – Project Gutenberg – gutenberg.org. It is a volunteer project which helps to collect full texts of public domain books. The project contains over 60 000 free ebooks in its collection. The books are available in formats: plain text, HTML, PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Most of the items are the full texts of public domain books. These eBooks may be freely used in the United States. For more details see their Terms of Use page. There are books sorted by popularity.
• LibriVox | free public domain audiobooks – librivox.org. LibriVox helps Gutenberg project to record audio books. In the links on their website you can find everything you need: audio and online text. The texts refer to project Gutenberg. Audio files are available for download in M4B, mp3 format or you can play them on their website. Many of their recording are published on archive.org.
• Lit2Go: books, authors – etc.usf.edu. On this nice page are text and audio in one place. The text is in HTML format. I recomend Lit2Go for English learners. It is useful when you want to read, listen and use a dictionary for some unknown words.
• Internet Archive: Audio Books & Poetry – archive.org. It is an American digital library. There are many audio files of free books. The books are also available in digital form as images. You can find the text (scans of books) by searching text contents. The Archive also includes a collection of music, movies, software applications and games.
• Open Library – openlibrary.org (text only),
• Greatest AudioBooks – youtube.com,
• Loyal Books – 7,000+ Free Audio Books & eBook Downloads – loyalbooks.com,
• Open Culture – openculture.com,
• Rakuten OverDrive – enjoy ebooks and audiobooks for free – overdrive.com,
• Spotify – spotify.com,
• Storynory – storynory.com,
• manybooks – manybooks.net,
• PublicAudioLibrary – youtube.com.

Amazon

• Amazon Best Sellers in Kindle Store – amazon.com,
• Amazon Best Sellers in Children’s eBooks – amazon.com.