My best friend Julian and I were really into music. We sold CDs to our friends, and in time became real DJs. Julian changed his name to MC Cesar and hired a bodyguard. I knew he was going too far, but he thought no one could stop him. The problem was, they could. Dark Reads are very short novels of just 600 words, written specifically to appeal to struggling teenage readers. Each story has the perfect combination of accessible language and interesting, age-appropriate content. Every title has the look and feel of a real book with contents page, information about the author and illustrator, story facts and dynamic two-tone illustrations. Dark Reads I draws on supernatural classics and famous monsters while Dark Reads II presents a modern and relatable 'way in' to the plays of Shakespeare. This hi-lo series for struggling and reluctant readers has been written for children aged between 12 and 15 years, whose current reading age is 6-7. These age-appropriate short reads have 32 pages and are written by talented authors. They use a large font size, and the language and sentence structure are intentionally written so that students who are reading behind their chronological age can succeed in reading them. The series has plenty of practice at one level, allowing consolidation of learning before moving on to more challenging reads.