It once occurred to a King that if he knew the right moment when to begin on any work and the right kind of people to have or not to have dealings with and the thing to do that...

Leo Tolstoy is widely recognized as one of the world's greatest novelists and short story writers and a master of realistic fiction. He is equally known for his complex and...

A heart-opening tale of transformation.One winter evening a shoemaker finds a mysterious stranger naked and freezing by a shrine in his small village. The shoemaker rescues the...

The brilliance of the story is how a normal bureaucrat, a judge in this case, has a small accident that winds up gradually taking his life. As he deals with this incident, with...

When a troubled schoolboy forges a cash coupon to pay off a debt, his deed starts off a chain reaction of tragedies that effects the lives of dozens, leading to thefts,...

Two love stories are set against the backdrop of high society in Tsarist Russia. Anna awakens from a loveless marriage to find herself drawn irresistibly to the dashing cavalry...

In the town of Vladímir lived a young merchant named Iván Dmítritch Aksyónof. He had two shops and a house of his own. Aksyónof was a handsome, fair-haired, curly-headed...

There were once two old men who decided to go on a pilgrimage to worship God at Jerusalem. One of them was a well-to-do peasant named Efím Tarásitch Shevélev. The other, Elisha...

In Petersburg in the eighteen-forties a surprising event occurred. An officer of the Cuirassier Life Guards, a handsome prince who everyone predicted would become aide-decamp to...

A story of a successful farmer Ilyas who grew into one of the wealthiest in the area only to loose it all through series of bad accidents. He finds his happiness however only...