Self-reading manual to improve reading skills and reading comprehension in English. Comments and dictionary in Ukrainian and Russian languages. The manual consists of two works of American literature of the first half of the 19th century. - the stories "Peter Rugg, Missing" by William Austin and "Wives of the Dead" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The imaginative, colorful language of these stories will expand the reader's understanding of the beauty and richness of the English language. These stories are about the unusual around and within us: half a century pass as one long day, "sleep is indistinguishable from reality, and a carelessly abandoned promise acquires fatal power. "The manual consists of the original text of the stories, comments on the text, a dictionary and a collection of exercises with keys to them.