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This novel, published in three parts between 1837 and 1843, tells the story of Lucien de Rubempré, a talented young poet who leaves behind a scandalous provincial life for the shallow, corrupt, and cynical vortex of modernity that was nineteenth-century Paris.

Paris, 1819. Eugene de Rastignac, a young law student, lives at a boarding house. Also residing there is an elderly man known as "Pere" Goriot. Once wealthy, Goriot was has spent most of his fortune on his two daughters, Anastasie de Restaud and Delphine de Nucingen, and his pove...

"We think of Honore Balzac as the author of long and fully upholstered novels, stitched together into the magnificent visionary document called The Human Comedy. Yet along with the full-length fiction within The Human Comedy stand many shorter works, and it's here that we get som...

When an aspiring poet joins a cynical team of journalists in nineteenth-century Paris, he agrees to write positive reviews for bribes, and finds success at the expense of his conscience.

Known for his keen observations and finely drawn characters, Honore de Balzac is regarded as one of the forerunners of the literary realism movement that swept Europe in the nineteenth century. A Woman of Thirty offers an unflinching look at the layers of social oppression that...

This exquisite novella from master of French realism Honore de Balzac illustrates how greed and covetousness can infect and fester in even the most seemingly pure people and environments. An ascetic clergyman becomes the target of a nefarious plot. Will he be able to escape with ...

An aspiring poet joins a cynical team of journalists in nineteenth-century Paris. When he agrees to write rave reviews for bribes, achieving material success at the expense of his conscience, and soon discovers that the written word can be an instrument of both beauty and deceit....

Lisbeth Fischer feels she's been wronged--though much of what she perceives may only reside in her imagination. Seeking vengeance against the family of her beautiful cousin, Adeline, she leverages the uncontrollable sexual appetites of her cousin's husband as the linchpin of her ...