Interactive English

Santa Claus lives in the Laughing Valley, where stands the big, rambling castle in which his toys are manufactured. His workmen, selected from the ryls, knooks, pixies and fairies, live with him, and everyone is as busy as can be from one year's end to another. One would think that our good old Santa Claus, who devotes his days to making children happy, would have no enemies on all the Earth; and, as a matter of fact, for a long period of time he encountered nothing but love wherever he might go.

This progressive tension-reduction technique teaches you how to train your body for relaxation. It can be practised before bedtime, after waking and during the day to reduce stress levels and buildup of tension and to improve quality of sleep. This technique is based on cognitive behavioural therapy, with focus on releasing tension in each muscle group and the whole body. Creating physical relaxation in the body is important for sleep and can reduce anxiety.

"When a word game turns deadly, how do you fight it?" Who do you go to for help? Martin must answer these questions before he becomes the next victim of an insidious plot. In a single day Byrne's simple life as a business executive is turned upside down, because of his fascination with word games. And he is not the only one in danger.

Between five and six in the evening. A fairly well-known man of learning is sitting in his study nervously biting his nails. ''It's positively revolting,'' he says, continually looking at his watch. ''It shows the utmost disrespect for another man's time and work. In England such a person would not earn a farthing, he would die of hunger. You wait a minute, when you do come....'' The short story is read in English, and unabridged.

One day when she was younger and better looking, and when her voice was stronger, Nikolay Petrovitch Kolpakov, her adorer, was sitting in the outer room in her summer villa. It was intolerably hot and stifling. Kolpakov, who had just dined and drunk a whole bottle of inferior port, felt ill humoured and out of sorts. Both were bored and waiting for the heat of the day to be over in order to go for a walk. Read in English, unabridged.

'If anything happens it's all known at once, nothing is hidden! It's incredible! You can't imagine! Look! My name has been published! Now all Russia knows of me!' A cautionary tale about people wanting and getting fame at any cost.

'Once, as I was wandering about the fields after partridges with Yermolai, I saw some way off a deserted garden, and turned into it. I had hardly crossed its borders when a snipe rose up out of a bush with a clatter. I fired my gun, and at the same instant, a few paces from me, I heard a shriek; the frightened face of a young girl peeped out for a second from behind the trees, and instantly disappeared. Yermolai ran up to me: "Why are you shooting here? There is a landowner living here."'

A local investigating magistrate unsuccessfully tries to explain that it is wrong to take nuts off the railroad track to a peasant, Grigoryev, who simply cannot see why he's to be deprived of his right to use an iron nut as a weight for his fishing line.