Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex is the home of the Starkadder family, and when Flora Poste, their young cousin, decides to go and live with them, she is rather afraid of what she will find there. She knows that people who live on farms in Sussex are bound to be deeply unhappy. They are usually simple country people, close to the earth, working in muddy fields and smelly cowsheds. They are moody, quarrelsome, and confused. It is always raining, and nobody ever laughs.

Her cousins at Cold Comfort Farm meet all her expectations, and more. The Staradders quarrel and fight, are miserable most of the time, and their farmyard is foul-smelling and dirty. And they are all peculiar in different ways - Amos about religion, Judith about her son Seth, Reuben about his muddy fields, Elfine about her poetry. Worst of all, ancient Aunt Ada Doom can never forget that she saw something nasty in the woodshed when she was two.

Flora, however, is cheerful, efficient, and full of common sense. She disapproves strongly of unhappiness ("so unnecessary") and smelly cowsheds ("so disgusting"). She also has great determination, and the Starkadders have a few surprises coming to them...

The Oxford bookworms library offers a wide range of original and adapted stories, both classic and modern, which take learners from elementary to advanced level through six carefully graded language stages:

Stage 1 (400 headwords)

Stage 2 (700 headwords)

Stage 3 (1000 headwords)

Stage 4 (1400 headwords)

Stage 5 (1800 headwords)

Stage 6 (2500 headwords)

This book is at stage 6.

At the end of this book, it supplies questions to help you check your comprehension after reading the story.