German Stories with Audio Recordings
All my graded readers come with audio recordings and they are free for members of the German with Stories community. As a newsletter subscriber, you will get access to a Google Drive folder where you can download all audios you need. Please use the form below and get a free short story, too. Although the audio recordings are free, I still own the copyright. That means it’s no okay to share them with others. Be fair. Vielen Dank!
GRADED READERS
Carla Series
Carla, a young Portuguese woman, is the protagonist of this series of 4 books that will accompany you while your German gradually improves. While exploring Munich, Berlin and the island of Rügen, Carla finds her first job in Germany, falls in love, helps to solve a crime and eventually needs to make a difficult decision.
A1 – Carla will nach Deutschland
Meet Carla, a young woman from Portugal who studies German and plans to look for a summer job in Munich. All texts are connected and are talking about the same people. They do things and have experiences that you know from your own life. For our brain, it’s easier to remember content we can relate to. The stories are interesting to read and challenging enough to keep your brain working without feeling overwhelmed. The book also includes all essential A1 and some A2 grammar with explanations and exercises.
A2 – Jobsuche in München
While looking for a room at Munich’s overcrowded housing market and having her first experience on the job market, Paula meets new friends and falls in love. Will she return to Portugal after her summer in Germany or will she stay in Bavaria’s vibrant capital? You will find a combination of a narrative using past tense and dialogues using present and present perfect tense and will practice regular and irregular past tense verbs in the exercises that follow each of the 12 chapters. Cultural hints throughout the book will help you understand Germany and the Germans better
B1 – Ein unvergesslicher Urlaub
Carla and her boyfriend Henrik travel from Munich to Berlin. First, they do sightseeing in Germany’s capital. Then, they go to the island of Rügen to volunteer and spend time in nature. Unfortunately, someone steals jewelry and money from their hosts. As the police are not very helpful, Carla and Henrik team up with a Bulgarian hacker and an Irish bestseller author to find the thief. You will also find cultural insights, vocabulary German-English, language tips and grammar and vocabulary exercises in the book.
B2 – Umzug nach Berlin
After their vacation on the German Baltic Sea coast, Carla and Henrik move to Berlin. While Henrik enjoys the hustle and bustle of the German capital, Carla finds it difficult to adapt and starts to question her relationship. She knows that she needs to make a decision about her future. Will she stay in Germany or return to Portugal? The language focus of this book are colloquial and idiomatic expressions in everyday conversations.
Stand-alone novels
I already loved inventing stories when I was a kid and hope to publish my first “real” novel soon. In my graded readers, you will normally find protagonists from different countries and often references to German history. Because history is my passion and the subject I originally studied – although I never got a degree.
A1/A2 – Eine Familie aus Hamburg
Meet Luise and her family. Luise is a 70-year-old woman from Hamburg who lives in a big house with her parents, her daughter Paula and her husband and her granddaughter Jana. You will read about their everyday life, about their travels and also about Luise’s three other children who live in Berlin, England and France. The book consists of 24 short texts and you will also find helpful grammar and vocabulary exercises. The difficulty of the texts increases gradually as you keep on reading.
A2 – Karina hat eine Mission
Karina’s parents tragically die in a car accident, and she discovers that her father has another child, her half-brother Benjamin. He was born in the former German Democratic Republic where Karina’s father came from but never returned to after he moved to Munich and met Karina’s mother. Karina sets off to find Benjamin, meets a handsome Italian, visits some beautiful places in East Germany, and discovers pleasant and not-so-pleasant facts about her and Benjamin’s family.
B1 – Ein Sommer in Heidelberg
The lives of a young German marketing specialist, an Italian graduate student, and a Spanish programmer take unexpected turns after they accidentally meet in the beautiful city of Heidelberg.
- 12 chapters with key vocabulary German – English to help you understand quickly
- Short summaries, comprehension questions, vocabulary and grammar exercises at the end of each chapter
B1 – Mannheimer Begegnungen
Shortly before Jakub’s great-grandmother Aniela dies in the Polish city of Gdansk, she tells Jakub the big secret of her life. When she is only 16 years old, she and the young German soldier Heinrich Gärtner fall in love. They make plans to escape to Scandinavia but Heinrich is sent to Russia and dies in the battle of Stalingrad. After Aniela’s death, Jakub moves to the German city of Mannheim to find his family. One of his roommates is Oksana, a young girl from Ukraine who helps him with his search and gets herself into trouble because she feels attracted to a young Russian programmer. The two other roommates, a couple from Argentina, have problems of their own. Which turn will the lives of the young people take?
B2 – Johns deutsche Familie
When John’s great-grandmother dies, he discovers diaries written in German in the late 19th and early 20th century. A young historian helps him to translate the diaries. John learns about his ancestors’ lives in Texas after arriving from Germany in 1865. He is fascinated, learns German and travels to Bavaria where he meets his distant cousin Alexandra. Together, they discover the reason why the German part of the family stopped writing to their relatives in America and what kind of connection there was between their family and a leading member of the German Nazi party in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
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