English books for B2 learners

Books for confident B2 readers: the bulk of the classics library, novels where you follow the plot easily but still meet a few unfamiliar words on every page. The level is given for reading with tap-to-translate; without any help these books read about a step harder.

How these books compare

The shortest is The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: 25,729 words, about 3 hours of reading. The easiest vocabulary is in Robinson Crusoe: the 2,000 most common English words cover 88% of its text. The most rare words are in Jane Eyre, where the same 2,000 words cover 82.5%.

Book	Level	Words	Reading time	Covered by 2,000 common words
Robinson Crusoe	B2	121,429	≈ 14 h	88%
Pride and Prejudice	B2	122,735	≈ 14 h	86.6%
Peter Pan	B2	47,364	≈ 5 h	86%
The Jungle Book	B2	54,972	≈ 6 h	83.6%
The Hound of the Baskervilles	B2	59,496	≈ 7 h	86.4%
The Picture of Dorian Gray	B2	79,698	≈ 9 h	85%
Little Women	B2	191,236	≈ 21 h	84.9%
The Great Gatsby	B2	48,673	≈ 5 h	84.9%
Anne of Green Gables	B2	103,304	≈ 12 h	85.9%
Treasure Island	B2	68,759	≈ 8 h	85.1%
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde	B2	25,729	≈ 3 h	84.4%
A Christmas Carol	B2	28,755	≈ 3 h	84%
The Time Machine	B2	32,686	≈ 4 h	82.7%
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer	B2	71,114	≈ 8 h	83.4%
Jane Eyre	B2	188,242	≈ 21 h	82.5%