Teresa Gallagher

In Tolstoy's masterpiece, the gorgeous Anna Karenina is married to a significant government minister but falls in love with a prosperous army officer named Count Vronsky. Frantic for truth and significance in life, Anna recklessly defies the norms of Russian society, often smoking opium with her lover as she abandons her son and husband. Damned and detested by her peers, Anna finds herself increasingly jealous and unfulfilled.

The Woman in White is credited with being the first of the sensation novels, and one of the finest examples of the genre. A young woman's husband defrauds her of her fortune, her identity and eventually her sanity. She is saved by her sister and a loyal man who loves her, and her two rescuers attempt to expose her husband. They meet a woman dressed all in white whose fate seems curiously intertwined with that of the young woman. In the tradition

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Five stories from influential women writers of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. New Zealand-born Katherine Mansfield settled in England where she wrote a series of short stories that are widely recognised as among the finest of the twentieth century for their economy, clarity, sensitivity and effect. 'The Garden Party' is one of her most famous, while 'Daughters of the Late Colonel' shows a wonderful sense of...