While visiting Rome with their daughters, two middle-aged women reminisce about their romantic rivalry for the dashing Delphin Slade. Although Mrs. Slade admits to falsifying the letter that led to he…
When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D’Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her ‘c…
Weathering critical scorn, Lady Audley's Secret quickly established Mary Elizabeth Braddon as the leading light of Victorian 'sensation' fiction, sharing the honour only with Wilkie Collins. Addictive…
While his literary reputation rests mainly on such celebrated novels as Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Idiot, Dostoyevsky also wrote much superb short fiction. The Double is one…
De Profundis (Latin: "from the depths") is a 50,000 word letter written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol, to Lord Alfred Douglas, his lover. Wilde wrote the letter between Januar…
Drawing heavily from personal experience, Anne Brontë wrote Agnes Grey in an effort to represent the many 19th Century women who worked as governesses and …
This is Oscar Wilde's tale of the American family moved into a British mansion, Canterville Chase, much to the annoyance of its tired ghost. The family -- which refuses to believe in him -- is in Wild…
Adventurer Richard Hannay, just returned from South Africa, is thoroughly bored with London life—until he is accosted by a mysterious American, who warns him of an assassination plot that could comple…
Jean-Baptiste Clamence is a soul in turmoil. Over several drunken nights in an Amsterdam bar, he regales a chance acquaintance with his story. From this successful former lawyer and seemingly model ci…
Heralded as Virginia Woolf's greatest novel, this is a vivid portrait of a single day in a woman's life. When we meet her, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of party p…
Written in 1914 but not published until 1925, a year after Kafka’s death, The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must de…
One of Pushkin's most popular and chilling stories, 'The Queen of Spades' tells of a young man who develops a dangerous obsession in pursuit of the wealth he craves.
What is an individual's responsibility to nature? Does our desire to understand the world give us the right to dominate plant and animal life? Should human relationships take precedence over relations…
