Classic Love

Raymond Carver called Anton Chekhov "the greatest short story writer who has ever lived". This unequivocal verdict on Chekhov's genius has been echoed many times by writers as diverse as Katherine Mansfield, Somerset Maugham, John Cheever, and Tobias Wolf. While his popularity as a playwright has sometimes overshadowed his achievements in prose, the importance of Chekhov's stories is now recognized by readers as well as by fellow authors. Their themes - alienation, the absurdity and tragedy of human existence - have as much relevance today as when they were written.

This collection of masterful reinterpretations brilliantly demystifies and breathes new life into Shakespeare's work, demonstrating the continued resonance of a playwright whose popularity remains more than 400 years after his death. Now, the passion, heartbreak, deception, reconciliation, and mortality of Shakespeare’s originals can be understood by all, without the need to cross-reference to an enjoyment-sapping study guide.

Christina Crawford's book was an immediate bestseller, addressing the infrequently discussed topic of child abuse. When Paramount Pictures released the film, starring Faye Dunaway as Crawford, it was critically panned, and remains one of the most legendary critical bombs in film history. The lavish, big-screen adaptation drew unexpected laughter in the scenes depicting life in the Crawford household. Rarely have such good intentions been met with such ridicule.

Plato's dialogue in the Symposium, which has as its topic the subject of love, explores the idea of love as a means of ascent to contemplation of the Divine. For Plato, generally, to love other human beings is to direct one's mind to love of Divinity. One proceeds from recognition of another's beauty to appreciation of Beauty as it exists apart from any individual, to consideration of Divinity, the source of Beauty, to love of Divinity.

When Mrs. Dashwood is forced by an avaricious daughter-in-law to leave the family home in Sussex, she takes her three daughters to live in a modest cottage in Devon. For Elinor, the eldest daughter, the move means a painful separation from the man she loves, but her sister Marianne finds in Devon the romance and excitement which she longs for.

Originally published in 1860, Ivan Turgenev’s First Love follows a 16-year-old boy’s infatuation with an older princess, who has moved in next door.

In his second collection, including the iconic and much-referenced title story featured in the Academy Award-winning film Birdman, Raymond Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated short-story writers in American literature. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one's way through the dark.

The Way to Love reveals that there is another way besides laborious self-pushing on the one hand and stagnant acquiescence on the other. It is the way of self-understanding. These things in you that you struggle to fix just need to be understood. If you understood them, they would change, and you would discover that here and now is all is well. Though everything seems a mess, all is well. You would discover that you are already happy and fulfilled right now, and always have been, though you don’t yet know it.

Every so often a love story so captures our hearts that it becomes more than a story—it becomes an experience to remember forever. The Notebook is such a book. It is a celebration of how passion can be ageless and timeless, a tale that moves us to laughter and tears and makes us believe in true love all over again . . .

Jane Austen wrote Love and Friendship (originally spelled Love and Freindship [ sic]) when she was just 14 years old. The three notebooks that contain her early works, including this story, are currently on display at the Bodleian Library and the British Museum. Taking the form as letters written by the heroine to the daughter of her friend, this story resembles a fairy tale that lampoons the conventions of romantic stories at the time.

Christmas should be a joyous time. But this year the celebration is overshadowed in sickness, sorrow, and disappointment. Seeing her grandmother struggle with pain and sadness, Emily decided to share a story that she's never told anyone. As old memories live again through her words, two broken hearts find healing and comfort—and the courage to celebrate Christmas once again. Tidings of Comfort & Joy reminds us to share the bonds of faith and family that Christmas represents whatever the circumstances or season.

Love is Angela Carter's fifth novel and was first published in 1971. With surgical precision it charts the destructive emotional war between a young woman, her husband and his disruptive brother as they move through a labyrinth of betrayal, alienation and lost connections.

Being dead sucks. Make that being undead sucks. Literally. Just ask Thomas C. Flood. Waking up after a fantastic night unlike anything he's ever experienced, he discovers that his girlfriend, Jody, the woman of his dreams, is a vampire. And surprise! Now he's one, too.

The Professor is Charlotte Brontë's first novel albeit the last to have been published. Edited and distributed by Arthur Bell Nicholls, two years after Brontë's death, it is based on her experiences of living as a language student in Brussels. The Professor follows the career and love affairs of William Crimsworth, a reserved but compassionate aristocrat who has been ostracised by his family and left penniless.

Sensual, macabre, joyous and liberating, The Flowers of Evil, or Les Fleurs du Mal, is a beautifully debauched reflection on dreams, sin, life, and death. With subjects ranging from travel to drugs, sex to faith, sleep to contemplation, Baudelaire finds new beauty in the most sinister and corrupt of situations. His morbid and nightmarish Romanticism was completely unique: cynical and bleak, but also inspiring. The book was highly controversial upon its release and Napoleon III’s government prosecuted Baudelaire for "an insult to public decency".

Humphries has rendered (Ovid's) love poetry with conspicuous success into English which is neither obtrusively colloquial nor awkwardly antique.

At the end of a dinner party, the remaining guests drink wine and tell stories of their first love. For one of them, it will be a dark journey into his past, reawakening unbearable memories of his obsession with the beautiful Zinaida.

In Dreams Made Flesh, discover the origin of the mystical Jewels, and experience the forbidden passion between Lucivar and a simple hearth witch. Witness the clash between Saetan and a Priestess that may forever change reality. And learn whether the sacrifice of Jaenelle's magic has destroyed any hope of happiness between her and Daemon.

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.

In this seductive follow-up to Poison Princess, #1 New York Times bestselling author Kresley Cole takes us deeper into the dark world of the Arcana Chronicles. With threats lurking around every corner, Evie is forced to trust her newfound alliance. Together they must fight not only other Arcana, but also Bagmen zombies, post-apocalyptic storms, and cannibals