Unfortunately pretty much all Mandarin books I know have boring topics.... You need to get to a more advanced level to chose your own. This said, the Chinese Breeze books are generally not too boring. One book is one short story, about 60 pages or so - but they are written in 100% Chinese (no Pinyin). Sounds probably difficult for you, but IMHO even a beginner can manage that. A whole book has only 300 or so characters. There is also a CD with (totally bad quality, not done by voice actors)

hi ,I am an Mandarin native Speaker ,and also an English learner for more than 10years .in my view ,learning has no shortcut ,just practice as often as you can ..finding an native Speaker is very very helpful in many kinds .wish we can get along and help each orther to improve .my qq is 1033650462

I'm told if you use books, you should use books that come with audio. This way, you can hear the words spoken as well.

Elementary Chinese Readers 1,2,3,4...