Intermediate stories
Original French stories written for this level, with comprehension questions.
Short stories
40 original stories written for this level, each with a comprehension check.
Les petits mots
Clément has just moved into a flat in Lyon, and every evening an anonymous note complains about his noise.
Le déménagement
Inès is moving into a fifth-floor flat in Marseille with no lift, and all her friends have promised to help.
Le mauvais Saint-Martin
Lucas books a summer holiday house for his friends, but he doesn't read the address very carefully.
Le premier repas
Nathan, a vegetarian, meets his girlfriend's parents in Colmar for the first time, and lunch is a huge plate of sausages.
Le stand de fromages
Every Saturday, Léa buys cheese at a market stall in Annecy, which is strange, because she has a secret.
L'annonce de tante Odile
At the yearly family lunch in the Dordogne, seventy-eight-year-old Aunt Odile has an announcement to make.
La fête des voisins
Aurélie organises a party for the neighbours in her Paris building and invites everyone, even the man who never says hello.
En pyjama dans l'escalier
One Sunday morning in Toulouse, Simon takes the rubbish down in his pyjamas and the door slams shut behind him.
Papa passe son permis
At fifty-six, Jade's father, who has never driven in his life, decides to get his driving licence.
Le pacte de la plage
Twenty-five years ago, two twelve-year-old boys in Le Havre made a promise. Today is the day.
Coincés dans le village
A retired couple from Lille rents a huge camper van for a trip to Provence and follows the GPS a little too faithfully.
Les tomates disparues
In a community garden in Nantes, the best tomatoes vanish every night, and the strict president is determined to catch the thief.
Un week-end chez tonton
Max, a single thirty-four-year-old, is sure that looking after his niece and nephew for a weekend will be easy.
Sept minutes
Sarah's friend drags her to a speed-dating evening in Strasbourg, and it is every bit as bad as she expected.
Le train de nuit
Élodie takes her first night train to the Alps, full of romantic ideas, and finds herself next to a champion snorer.
La fève
Thomas has a secret plan for his family's Epiphany cake, but he has forgotten one family tradition.
Les messages de maman
Every Sunday, Hugo's mother leaves him a long voicemail, and every Sunday he doesn't listen to it.
Le cheval de Camargue
Julien is terrified of horses, but for their tenth anniversary his partner has booked a horse ride in the Camargue.
Chez Madame Lebrun
Unable to afford a flat in Bordeaux, Kenza moves in with a strict eighty-one-year-old widow who has a list of house rules.
Le mauvais numéro
Nina sends a message to her grandmother's new phone number, but a stranger in Grenoble answers.
Dîner à midi
On her first day as an intern in a Montreal video-game studio, Inès is invited to a team "dîner" and gets the time badly wrong.
La page du lundi
Every Monday, a young accountant in a Nantes office finds a mysterious poem left in the photocopier, and he decides to find out who writes them.
La veille de l'oral
The night before an important geography exam in Dakar, a power cut sends a student out into the street to revise under the only working lamp.
Le colocataire invisible
A student in Liège shares a flat with a roommate he has never once seen, only the notes he leaves on the fridge.
La lettre de motivation
Lucas dreams of working for a Geneva chocolate maker, but when he sends his cover letter, he attaches the wrong version.
Le voleur de yaourts
In a small Lille agency, someone keeps stealing food from the office fridge, and the team leader decides to find out who.
Le guide débutant
On his first day as a tour guide in the Marrakech medina, a young history student leads his group straight into trouble.
La nuit au dépanneur
A French exchange student in Québec City is trapped by a snowstorm in a corner shop with its owner and a very talkative stranger.
Votre départ
On a Friday evening in Brussels, Sophie gets a short voicemail from her boss and spends the whole weekend convinced she is about to lose her job.
Un entretien à Lausanne
Mathis walks into a job interview above Lausanne and recognizes the director as the camp counsellor he once played a terrible prank on.
Le kayamb de monsieur Payet
During her last placement in a retirement home on Réunion, a student nurse tries to reach an old man who no longer speaks to anyone.
La plus belle femme de Sainte-Anne
A young postman in Martinique has to deliver a parcel addressed only to "the most beautiful woman in Sainte-Anne".
Les tomates du labo
A PhD student in Grenoble is getting impossible results from his tomato plants and starts to suspect sabotage.
Le zémidjan
A motorbike-taxi driver in Cotonou finds a forgotten package on his bike and realizes a young woman's future depends on it.
Le micro allumé
Working from home in Bordeaux with her sick little boy beside her, Camille says one sentence too many during a video meeting.
L'accent de France
A French teacher on exchange in Chicoutimi, Québec, finds that his pupils laugh at the way he speaks, until a winter accident changes everything.
Les lettres de l'Expo
Working in a Brussels antique shop, a history student finds a bundle of love letters from 1958 that end with a mysterious meeting.
Trois jours à Fès
Sent to Fès to get a contract signed in three days, a young buyer from Lyon can't understand why the workshop owner keeps talking about everything except business.
L'apprentie horlogère
A young apprentice watchmaker in La Chaux-de-Fonds damages a precious watch and must decide whether to tell her strict master.
L'auditeur de vingt-trois heures
An intern at a night-time radio station in Abidjan wonders about the caller who requests the same old love song every evening at eleven.