In these three short stories, Émile Zola presents characters in search of fulfillment-romantic, religious, and financial. Read together, they give us an extraordinary depiction of sexual mores. When the apparently angelic Thérèse commits murder, she offers sexual favors to a petty clerk if he will dispose of the body; the pregnant Flavie manipulates a neighbor's interest in her dowry to arrange a shotgun wedding; and churchgoing women find their...

Embarking on a tour of Italy with his wife and mother-in-law, Martin Whitby slips and falls under a train. Owing his rescue to the quick thinking of a young soldier, he feels obliged to thank the youth and so pursues the acquaintance. The two men differ sharply in outlook and opinion, however, and part rudely. But once back in England, Martin finds himself called upon by the soldier with an urgent request for help. British novelist E.M. Forster (1879-1971)...

Jane Austen's‚ Love and Friendship, is an epistolary story, written in 1790 when she was fourteen, and dedicated to her cousin Eliza de Feuillide. Featuring improbable coincidences and turns of fate, in form, the story satirizes conventional romance novels of the time, and shows the early development of wit and observation that would make Austen one of the most famous of all British writers. Even the subtitle, "Deceived in Friendship and Betrayed...