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Graded readers for English learners are novels written at your level, so you can enjoy a whole story in English without stopping at every second word. Classics like Pride and Prejudice or Dracula are wonderful, but they were written for native speakers 150 years ago, and many learners give up early. A graded reader keeps the story and makes the English fit you.
In this guide you’ll find out what graded readers are, how to choose your CEFR level, and why reading and listening at the same time works so well. Then we’ll introduce the first fourteen books in our own series of graded readers for adults, from A1 to C1, each with an audiobook and an English Learning Guide. You can start with one, The Blue Suitcase, completely free.
Featured: Diwali in the Rain (B1), a love story in rainy Dublin.
A sample of the books in the series, one from each level, from the easiest to the most advanced. Tap a cover to listen to the first chapter free.
Graded readers are books written for language learners at a specific level. The vocabulary, grammar and sentence length are controlled, so a learner at that level can read the whole book and understand the story without a dictionary. In English, they are usually graded by the CEFR levels, from A1 (beginner) to C1 (advanced).
There are two kinds of graded reader:
Graded readers are not only for children. The best ones are written for adults: grown-up characters, real places, jobs, relationships and a mystery to solve, in English you can manage.
The CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference) describes six levels of language ability. Graded readers for adults are most useful from A1 to C1. If you’re not sure of your level, try the British Council’s guide to English levels.
| Level | What you can do | A graded reader at this level |
|---|---|---|
| A1 (beginner) | You understand simple, everyday words and very short sentences. | Very short sentences, mostly the present tense; under an hour of listening |
| A2 (elementary, “false beginner”) | You understand everyday sentences about family, shopping, travel and work. | Short sentences, mostly present and past tenses; one to two hours of listening |
| B1 (intermediate) | You can follow the main points of clear English on familiar topics. | Longer stories, more conversation; about two hours of listening |
| B2 (upper intermediate) | You understand most of a TV series or a work meeting, and the main ideas of complex text. | Full novels with a wide range of grammar; about three hours of listening |
| C1 (advanced) | You read for pleasure in English, with a few unknown words. | Close to normal novels; four hours of listening or more |
A quick test: open a page of the book. If you know almost every word (reading researchers suggest about 95%), it’s the right level for reading for pleasure. If you’re looking up a word in every line, go down a level. You’ll read more, and you’ll learn more.
Graded readers with audio give you two skills for the price of one. When you listen and follow the text on screen at the same time:
In the Digitalbook app, every audiobook in the series comes with the full text on screen, so you can switch between listening, reading and both whenever you like.
Tap the read-along button (circled) to follow the text on screen as you listen.
The Digitalbook AI Series is a new and growing collection of original novels and short stories written as graded readers for adult learners of English. There are mysteries, romances, ghost stories, travel and a coming-of-age story, set in real places from London, York and Dublin to Barcelona, Portugal and Vermont. Here is the first collection of fourteen books, and more are on the way. Every book is:
The first chapter of every book is free, usually the Introduction, so you can try before you buy.
Here are the books, from the easiest to the most advanced.
Very short sentences and simple, everyday English. Start here if you’re a beginner.
It’s Saturday morning at the Blue Cup, a small café in a small English town. At eleven o’clock there’s a birthday party, and Max’s strawberry cake is beautiful. At twenty-five to eleven, the cake is gone. There are five people in the café, and nobody saw anything. So who has got the cake? A short, warm mystery in very clear English.
Level: A1 · A cosy café mystery · 45 min · a small English town
Short sentences, everyday English and a story you can finish. Start here if you’re a “false beginner”.
Emma Clarke has never travelled alone. She lands in Portugal for her best friend’s wedding and takes the wrong blue suitcase off the carousel. Inside: an old man’s shirts, a child’s drawing, and a silver pocket watch labelled “For Lara — 7”. Somewhere in the city, the old man has her bridesmaid’s dress. The wedding is on Saturday.
Level: A2 · A light mystery and travel adventure · 2 h 7 min · north Portugal · free
Ben Ashby, an English bookseller, arrives in the small town of Larkin, Vermont, to look after an old bookshop. On his first day, a book falls from the top shelf. Someone has cut a hole in its pages, and inside the hole there is a small, rusty key. What does it open? And who hid it there?
Level: A2 · A cosy small-town mystery · 2 h 4 min · Vermont, USA
In many countries there are nights when the dead come home. In a small hotel in Marrakech, a light comes on every night in a room nobody uses. On the last train in Tokyo, an old woman never gets off. On a mountain road in Mexico, a girl asks for a lift home. Five quiet ghost stories from five countries, about fifteen minutes each.
Level: A2 · Five ghost stories · 1 h 16 min · five countries, from Morocco to Japan
Merrowby is a small town by the sea, and nothing big happens there. But a necklace disappears from a hotel room. A bag waits under a seat on the last bus. A light comes on every night in a flat where nobody lives. Six short mysteries, about ten minutes each, and every one has a surprise at the end.
Level: A2 · Six short mysteries · 1 h 8 min · Merrowby, a town by the sea
More conversation, longer chapters and the past tenses in action.
Leo Grant is eighteen, waiting for his exam results, and spending the summer at his uncle’s in the Lake District. In the garage he finds a home-made radio transmitter and a box of tapes from 2006. Two teenagers ran a secret radio station from that garage, until one stormy night it stopped. Everyone in town remembers why. Everyone remembers it differently.
Level: B1 · A coming-of-age mystery · 2 h 27 min · the Lake District
London, 1891. Ada Whitmore’s brother disappeared six months ago, and the police stopped looking. Then, one foggy night, a bell rings three times in a church that has been empty for twenty years. The next morning a letter arrives in her brother’s handwriting: “Find the man with the silver watch.” Ada doesn’t trust the police. She’s going to find him herself.
Level: B1 · A Victorian detective mystery · 1 h 44 min · London, 1891
Anika is twenty-two, and she has a plan: one year in Dublin, a master’s degree, then home to Bengaluru. Her family has paid for this year with a very big loan, so she can’t get anything wrong. Then, on her first day, she gets lost, breaks her umbrella, and meets a young Irishman who thinks the rain is lovely.
Level: B1 · A romance · 1 h 48 min · Dublin
Freya is nineteen, and she has one rule for her summer job in Barcelona: it’s only until September. Then she’s going home to start university. But on her first day, on the metro, she shouts at a young man with a camera. An hour later, at the small hotel where she’s going to work, he’s her trainer.
Level: B1 · A summer romance · 1 h 59 min · Barcelona
These two books start at B1 and finish at B2: the grammar grows with the story.
Anna Miller has the same coffee on the same bench at King’s Cross every morning at twenty past eight. For two weeks, a man in a grey overcoat has been standing at Platform Seven. He never gets on a train. Then he vanishes, leaving an envelope on Anna’s bench, and inside it is a photograph of her mother that should not exist.
Level: B1–B2 · A family mystery · 2 h 49 min · London and Brighton
Lucy Marsh has six weeks in Silver Bay and no intention of staying anywhere. Then the door in the sea cave, shut since before anyone can remember, is standing open, and there is a box behind it. Inside are twenty letters written in 1978 by a fisherman nobody believed, addressed to a woman who still lives up the hill.
Level: B1–B2 · A seaside mystery · 2 h 35 min · north Cornwall
Full novels with a wide range of grammar, from the passive to the third conditional.
One frosty morning in York, Clara Fenn finds a box on the step of the small museum where she works. Inside are six objects and a note: they belonged to the Callow family, who left York in 1971. The city falls in love with the Callows. But the closer Clara looks at their things, the less they add up.
Level: B2 · A literary mystery · 2 h 53 min · York
Lena Ortiz works for a busy marketing agency in London. One Monday morning, at exactly 9:03, everyone in the office receives the same email. There’s no name and no signature, only a short story about them. Somebody wants to leave. A manager has made a serious mistake. And everything in the email is true.
Level: B2 · A workplace mystery, great for business English · 2 h 52 min · London
A longer travel novel for confident readers.
Three friends, twenty-three and stuck. They sell what they cannot carry, buy three one-way tickets to Bangkok, and give themselves one year with no plan and no way home. What are they really looking for? And what happens when the road separates them, with the year almost gone?
Level: B2–C1 · A travel novel across four continents · 4 h 36 min
These fourteen books are the first collection in the Digitalbook AI Series. New graded readers are being written now, at every level from A1 to C1, with the same British English narration, read-along text and English Learning Guide. To see the newest titles, visit the featured audiobooks in the Digitalbook store or app.
Every ebook comes with an English Learning Guide: one unit for each chapter, to use after you’ve read it. Each unit has:
Every vocabulary and phrase example is taken word for word from the novel, so what you study is exactly what you read and heard. Here are three rows from the first unit of The Email Nobody Sent (B2):
| Word / phrase | Meaning | Example from the book |
|---|---|---|
| a client | a person or company that pays another company for a service | When a client wants to sell something, Lena reads the research |
| a reminder | a message that helps you remember to do something | This week she’s sending a reminder about the key cards |
| to move up | to get a better, more important job in the same company | in the way that two people are friendly when they both want to move up. |
| If you like… | Your level | Start with |
|---|---|---|
| A short, cosy mystery | A1 | Nobody Saw the Cake |
| Travel and a happy ending | A2 | The Blue Suitcase (free) |
| Bookshops and small towns | A2 | The Key in the Book |
| Ghost stories from around the world | A2 | The Seat Was Still Warm |
| Short mysteries, one at a time | A2 | It Was Here a Minute Ago |
| Music, summer and friendship | B1 | The Garage Tapes |
| Victorian London and detectives | B1 | Three Bells at Midnight |
| Love and a year abroad | B1 | Diwali in the Rain |
| A summer romance in Spain | B1 | Only Until September |
| Family secrets and London | B1–B2 | The Man at Platform Seven |
| The sea and old letters | B1–B2 | The Secret at Silver Bay |
| Museums and history | B2 | The Museum Never Lies |
| Work, offices and business English | B2 | The Email Nobody Sent |
| Backpacking and big journeys | B2–C1 | Beyond the Horizon |
Graded readers are books written for language learners at a particular level. Their vocabulary, grammar and sentence length are controlled, so you can read the whole story and understand it without a dictionary. English graded readers are usually marked with a CEFR level, from A1 to C1.
Choose the level where you know almost every word on a page. If you need a dictionary in every line, go down a level: you’ll read more and enjoy it more. If a book feels effortless, go up. Most adult learners start at A2 or B1.
Yes. Reading while listening connects spelling with pronunciation, keeps you moving through the story, and trains your ear. A good routine is to listen to a chapter first, then listen again while you follow the text on screen.
It depends on the level. In the Digitalbook AI Series, the A1 book is about 45 minutes of listening, the A2 and B1 books are one to two and a half hours, and the B1–B2 and B2 novels are two and a half to three hours. At a chapter a day, you can finish most of them in one or two weeks.
No. Many graded readers are written for adults, with adult characters, jobs, relationships and real places. Every book in the Digitalbook AI Series is written for adult learners of English.
Yes. The Blue Suitcase (A2) is free as an audiobook and ebook in the Digitalbook app, and the first chapter of every other book in the series is free too.
Yes. These fourteen books are the first collection in the Digitalbook AI Series, and new graded readers are being written at every level from A1 to C1. The newest titles appear first on the featured audiobooks page in the Digitalbook store and app.
Ready for more? Our lists of free audiobooks for English learners and free ebooks for English learners bring together classic novels for when you’re ready to read the originals.
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