French author Guy de Maupassant's second novel “Bel Ami,” charts the incredible rise to power of journalist Georges Duroy. It’s widely considered Maupassant's greatest achievement as a novelist. By manipulating a series of wealthy mistresses...
Sweet Thursday is a 1954 novel by John Steinbeck. It is a sequel to Cannery Row and set in the years after the end of World War II. According to the author, “Sweet Thursday” is the day after Lousy Wednesday and the day before Waiting...
A painter is so obsessed with painting the perfect portrait of his beautiful wife, that he does nothing else until it is finished. As an artist myself, I can relate to this story in more ways than one. It is very short, only a couple of pages,...
Long considered the author's strangest novel, this work is a comic allegory aimed at the optimism and materialism of mid-18th-century America. A mysterious shape-changing confidence-man approaches passengers on a Mississippi steamboat and,...
New translations of the best stories by the one of the twentieth century’s greatest and most influential writers
No one has captured the modern experience, its wild dreams, strange joys, its neuroses and boredom, better than Franz Kafka. His...
Journey To the West was written by Wu Chen-en, and is considered to be one of the four great classic novels written during the Ming Dynasty (c. 1500-1582). Wu Chen-en was an elder statesman who witnessed a lot in his life, both good and bad, yet...
A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous Ida Arnold, who is determined to avenge a...