Classic Love

“Ahmad’s compassion, her deep care for the psychological and emotional nuances of her characters, never wavers.” – The New York Times Book Review In a searing collection by the award-winning author of The Return of Faraz Ali, characters seek to make their futures their own in a Pakistan...

A collection of original radio dramas by the much-loved Irish literary legend One of Ireland’s greatest contemporary authors, William Trevor won the Whitbread Prize three times, and was shortlisted four times for the Man Booker Prize. He received an honorary CBE in 1977 for his services to...

A gripping collection of propulsive, psychologically suspenseful stories by the legendary Joyce Carol Oates “who is surely on any shortlist of America’s greatest living writers” (The New York Times Magazine) “A genius in the truest sense of the word.”—Rebecca Makkai “One of the...

A spellbinding story collection from Booker Prize finalist Ruth Ozeki, about the lives we almost lived, the people we can’t quite forget, and the stories that shape us long after the last page is turned In this spirited and emotionally resonant collection, award-winning novelist Ruth Ozeki...

A most unusual request for insurance was made to Lloyds of London. It was outre enough to bring on what can best be described as something of “improbable dimensions.” The request was made by a young Brirtish Lord. He was engaged to an American heiress and was worried she might back out. An added part of the story is a guarantee there would be a sizeable payout if the ceremony stalls. The story of same can easily be called a delightful romantic comedy and it wouldn’t be surprising if you laugh out loud, or at least chuckle frequently.

There are so many kinds of love: romantic, filial, spiritual. The following stories by Mary Roberts Rinehart present all sorts of love. Many of the stories take place in hospitals, and two involve trans-Atlantic steam travel. Many have a light heart at their core, while some may induce the wonderment of social issues of their time and of ours. All end with an element of hope and happiness.

Love and Mr Lewisham (subtitled The Story of a Very Young Couple) is a 1900 novel set in the 1880s by H. G. Wells. It was among his first fictional writings outside the science fiction genre. Wells took considerable pains over the manuscript and said that "the writing was an altogether more serious undertaking than I have ever done before." He later included it in a 1933 anthology, Stories of Men and Women in Love.

In best-selling author Katie MacAlister’s Love in the Time of Dragons, suburban mom Tully Sullivan wakes up in a far-off place surrounded by strangers—many of them muscular, sexy ones—claiming to be dragons. They insist Tully is a dragon, too, and that she’s committed crimes deserving of death. Now Tully must disprove the allegations before time runs out.

The world of young Mr. Lewisham is one day turned upside down when he meets and falls in love with Ethel Henderson, a young woman from London who is visiting relatives in Sussex. Their brief and innocent rendezvous has significant implications when Lewisham’s job is threatened. Some time later, Lewisham moves to London, where he decides to go search of Ethel, but finding her proves to be more complicated than expected.

Pip is a poor orphaned boy who lives together with his sister and her husband. Pip is not educated but has great dreams of the future. He is determined to get out of the low class and seek progress in the higher class. One day a lawyer appears. Pip has suddenly received a large fortune from a secret benefactor and he has to get to London to start his education. Pip’s life changes in a second. But he is ready to embark on his next journey.

*INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER* *NOW A LIMITED SERIES ON MASTERPIECE PBS* Meet Van Der Valk, Amsterdam’s best detective, in Nicolas Freeling’s classic novel A woman, Elsa, is brutally murdered in her Amsterdam apartment. Her ex-lover, Martin, is seen outside the building around the time of the...

Years before his marriage to Olga Knipper and his self-imposed medical exile to Yalta, years before he even began writing the seminal works of dramatic literature for which he is renowned, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, to support his financially and physically struggling family, wrote stories...many, many stories. Starting in his early 20s, living in Moscow, he made a name for himself by capturing the peculiarities of Russian life through satire, humor, pathos, and passion. Myriad influences inspired his eventual words for the stage.

In Difficult Loves, Italy's master storyteller weaves tales in which cherished deceptions and illusions of love-including self-love-are swept away in magical instants of recognition. A soldier is reduced to quivering fear by the presence of a full-figured woman in his train compartment; a young clerk leaves a lady's bed at dawn; a young woman is isolated from bathers on a beach by the loss of her bikini bottom. Each of them discovers hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life.

Jake escapes his horrific captivity as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Cassie is a caregiver at the military hospital and nurses Jake back to health. Their love begins over a bowl of Jell-O and carries them back home to the Kansas farm. Everywhere life takes them, there are others with the same haunting dreams of war. Some have only one leg and some have none. Some have just lost their way home. Cassie and Jake begin with one person at a time and over 27 years, hundreds of vets find a little peace on the bank of the farm pond, and they learn to reach back and help another buddy up the hill. The best and the worst of us live in these words and the depth of Jake and Cassie's love can be understood only in the context of the world they dared to change.

Vivian, a student nurse, chose her profession as a challenge, both to her spirit and to her permanently exhausted body; Mic immerses himself in his work at the hospital to ward off the emotional wounds of an unhappy childhood. Through Jan, Viv's beloved older brother, they meet, and their friendship turns into a secret romance. Secret because, if discovered, it would cost them their jobs.

Maggie O'Shea knows that because of her dark past, there's no place for love in her life. She owns a successful store in Philadelphia, where she uses her special gifts to help the people she meets. Though this doesn't fulfill her, she is content. Most of the time.

When Quentin Collins invited Lara Balfour to Collinwood, they knew each other only from the correspondence that had grown out of Quentin’s admiration for the haunting waltz her father had composed. Soon Quentin professes to love Lara - but is his love really a threat? His first wife’s throat was torn out by a wolflike creature who escaped capture. Since then, other young women have died in the same grisly fashion…in the full of the moon, when Quentin’s mysterious “attacks” occur. Lara faces the terrifying possibility that her brooding, sensitive host is a werewolf.

What if the brightest charm hid the darkest truths beneath it? In Je ne Parle pas Français by Katherine Mansfield, you step into the mind of Raoul Duquette, a cynical Parisian narrator whose sharp observations, moral contradictions, and unsettling humor reveal far more about himself than about the people he judges.

A collection of eight short stories from American author, journalist, and social activist Jack London. Written during his 'Klondike' period, the title story 'Love of Life' follows the trek of a prospector across the Canadian tundra.

Clara and Robert Hatrell lead an ideal life with their young daughter Daisy in a beautiful old fashioned cottage on the banks of the Thames. When his son Cyril goes away to school their friend and neighbor Ambrose Arden who is a notable scholar offers to tutor Daisy. Some time later Robert carrying a large amount in banknotes is found stabbed to death in a London rooming house supposedly lured there by the mention of someone called Toinette. The murderer is not found and the money trail implicates a Frenchwoman exchanging the notes in Cannes, Nice and Paris.