The Thirty-Nine Steps

John Buchan

Oxford Bookworms LibraryLevel 4

A level 4 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by Nick Bullard.

'I turned on the light, but there was nobody there. Then I saw something in the corner that made my blood turn cold. Scudder was lying on his back. There was a long knife through his heart, pinning him to the floor.'

Soon Richard Hannay is running to his life across the hills of Scotland. The police are chasing him for a murder he did not do, and another, more dangerous enemy is chasing him as well – the mysterious 'Black Stone'. Who are these people? And why do they want Hannay dead?

JOHN BUCHAN

The Thirty-Nine Steps

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

As Richard Hannay walks home to his flat in London, he is feeling bored. Nothing exciting ever seems to happen in England, he thinks. Perhaps he’ll go back to Africa. But that night he has a visitor, a man called Scudder, who has a strange story to tell.

A week later Hannay is lying, hungry and exhausted, in the heather on a Scottish moor. Above him a small plane circles in the blue sky, flying low. Hannay lies still, hoping desperately that the plane will not see him, and thinks about Scudder’s little black notebook in his pocket. Who are the people chasing him – the mysterious �Black Stone’ that Scudder writes about? What is so important about �the thirty-nine steps’? And what is going to happen in London on the 15th of June?

But Scudder has been murdered, and Hannay must find his own answers, while his enemies chase him night and day through the hills of Scotland. If they catch him, they will kill him …

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ISBN 978 0 19 479188 5

A complete recording of this Bookworms edition of The Thirty-Nine Steps is available on audio CD ISBN 978 0 19 479156 4

Typeset by Wyvern Typesetting Ltd, Bristol

Printed in Hong Kong

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Illustrated by: Ron Tiner

Word count (main text): 17,170 words

For more information on the Oxford Bookworms Library, visit www.oup.com/bookwormswww.oup.com/bookworms (http://www.oup.com/bookworms) e-Book ISBN 978 0 19 478652 2

e-Book first published 2012

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THE MAN WHO DIED

I returned to my flat at about three o’clock on that May afternoon very unhappy with life. I had been back in Britain for three months and I was already bored. The weather was bad, the people were dull, and the amu