Books like 'Father Goriot'
Readers who enjoyed Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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The Complete Short Novels by Anton Chekhov
Rated: 4.47 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsAnton Chekhov, widely hailed as the supreme master of the short story, also wrote five works long enough to be called short novels. Here, brought together in one volume for the first time, in a masterly new translation by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky... -
![Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust, D.J. Enright]()
Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust, D.J. Enright
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFirst published in 1919, Within a Budding Grove was awarded the Prix Goncourt, bringing the author immediate fame. In this second volume of In Search of Lost Time, the narrator turns from the childhood reminiscences of Swann’s Way to memories of his adolescence...Categorized as:
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![One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest : A Play in Two Acts by Dale Wasserman, Ken Kesey]()
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest : A Play in Two Acts by Dale Wasserman, Ken Kesey
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsComedy Drama / 13m, 4f / Int. w. inset. Kirk Douglas played on Broadway as a charming rogue who contrives to serve a short sentence in an airy mental institution rather in a prison. This, he learns, was a mistake. He clashes with the head nurse, a fierce artinet... -
![Body and Soul by Frank Conroy]()
Body and Soul by Frank Conroy
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn the dim light of a basement apartment, six-year-old Claude Rawlings sits at an old white piano, picking out the sounds he has heard on the radio and shutting out the reality of his lonely world.The setting is 1940s New York, a city that is "long gone, replaced by another city of the same name...Categorized as:
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![A Daughter's Sorrow by Cathy Sharp]()
A Daughter's Sorrow by Cathy Sharp
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsHeartache and hardship in London’s East End, from the bestselling author of The Orphans of Halfpenny StreetBridget has always been the one to take on the responsibility for looking after her family... -
![Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ben Marcus]()
Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ben Marcus
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsA collection of powerful stories by one of the masters of Russian literature, illustrating the author's thoughts on political philosophy, religion and above all, humanity: Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead (150th Anniversary Edition)The compelling works presented in this volume were written at distinct periods in...Categorized as:
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![The Story of the Stone: The Warning Voice - Volume 3 of 5 by Cao Xueqin, David Hawkes]()
The Story of the Stone: The Warning Voice - Volume 3 of 5 by Cao Xueqin, David Hawkes
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratings"The Story of the Stone (c. 1760)", also known by the title of "The Dream of the Red Chamber", is the great novel of manners in Chinese literature. Divided into five volumes, of which "The Warning Voice" is the third, it charts the glory and decline of the illustrious Jia family (a story which closely accords with the fortunes of the author's own family)... -
![Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey]()
Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe magnificent second novel from the legendary author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Following the astonishing success of his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey wrote what Charles Bowden calls "one of the few essential books written by an American in the last half century...Categorized as:
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![Extinction by Thomas Bernhard]()
Extinction by Thomas Bernhard
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe last work of fiction by one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists, Extinction is widely considered Thomas Bernhard’s magnum opus. Franz-Josef Murau—the intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family—lives in Rome in self-imposed exile, surrounded by a coterie of artistic and intellectual friends...Categorized as:
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![Remembrance of Things Past: Volume III - The Captive, The Fugitive, & Time Regained by Marcel Proust]()
Remembrance of Things Past: Volume III - The Captive, The Fugitive, & Time Regained by Marcel Proust
Rated: 4.55 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe third and final volume includes THE CAPTIVE, THE FUGITIVE, and TIME REGAINED...Categorized as:
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![Your Blues Ain't Like Mine by Bebe Moore Campbell]()
Your Blues Ain't Like Mine by Bebe Moore Campbell
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsNow, in her first novel, repercussions are felt for decades in a dozen lives after a racist beating turns to cold-blooded murder in a small 1950s Mississippi town.Chicago-born Armstrong Tood is fifteen, black, and unused to the ways of the segregated Deep South, when his mother sends him to spend the summer with relatives in rural Mississippi... -
![The Debt of Tears by Cao Xueqin]()
The Debt of Tears by Cao Xueqin
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe Story of the Stone (c. 1760), also known by the title of The Dream of the Red Chamber, is the great novel of manners in Chinese literature. Divided into five volumes, of which The Debt of Tears is the fourth, The Story of the Stone charts the glory and decline of the illustrious Jia family (a story which closely accords with the fortunes of the author's own family)... -
![Swann's Way by Marcel Proust]()
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsMarcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English...Categorized as:
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![Swann's Way by Marcel Proust]()
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsMarcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English...Categorized as:
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![The Complete Stories of Truman Capote by Truman Capote]()
The Complete Stories of Truman Capote by Truman Capote
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA landmark collection that brings together Truman Capote’s life’s work in the form he called his “great love,” The Complete Stories confirms Capote’s status as a master of the short story...Categorized as:
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![A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean]()
A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsFrom its first magnificent sentence, "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing," to the last, "I am haunted by waters," "A River Runs Through It" is an American classic...Categorized as:
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![Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac]()
Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsHandsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and naive, but highly ambitious. Failing to make his name in his dull provincial hometown, he is taken up by a patroness, the captivating married woman Madame de Bargeton, and prepares to forge his way in the glamorous beau monde of Paris...Categorized as:
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![A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, Gary Shteyngart]()
A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, Gary Shteyngart
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsIn its adventurous happenings–its abductions, duels, and sexual intrigues–A Hero of Our Time looks backward to the tales of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, so beloved by Russian society in the 1820s and ’30s...Categorized as:
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![The Promise by Chaim Potok]()
The Promise by Chaim Potok
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratings“A superb mirror of a place, a time, and a group of people who capture our immediate interest and hold it tightly.” — The Philadelphia InquirerYoung Reuven Malter is unsure of himself and his place in life. An unconventional scholar, he struggles for recognition from his teachers...Categorized as:
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![The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy, Hugh McLean]()
The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy, Hugh McLean
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWith an Introduction and Notes by Dr T.C.B.Cook Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is best known for War and Peace and Anna Karenina, commonly regarded as amongst the greatest novels ever written. He also, however, wrote many masterly short stories, and this volume contains four of the longest and best in distinguished translations that have stood the test of time...Categorized as:
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![Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott, Agatha Christie]()
Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott, Agatha Christie
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsReturning from a visit to her daughter in Iraq, Joan Scudamore finds herself unexpectedly alone and stranded in an isolated rest house by flooding of the railway tracks. This sudden solitude compels Joan to assess her life for the first time ever and face up to many of the truths about herself...Categorized as:
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![The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham]()
The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsBased on the life of Paul Gauguin, The Moon and Sixpence is W. Somerset Maugham's ode to the powerful forces behind creative genius. Charles Strickland is a staid banker, a man of wealth and privilege. He is also a man possessed of an unquenchable desire to create art...Categorized as:
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![Mother of 1084 by Mahasweta Devi]()
Mother of 1084 by Mahasweta Devi
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsMahasweta Devi is one of India’s foremost literary figures, a prolific and best-selling author in Bengali of short fiction and novels, and a deeply political social activist who has been working in marginalized communities for decades... -
![Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse]()
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 85 ratingsSiddhartha (1922) by Hermann Hesse is a deceptively simple, intense, and lyrical allegorical tale of a man in ancient India striving for enlightenment at the time of Buddha. Siddhartha is a man whose life journey runs in parallel and who may or may not be another version of Buddha himself... -
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![All the Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner]()
All the Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsScarred by the senseless death of their son and baffled by the engulfing chaos of the 1960s, Allston and his wife, Ruth, have left the coast for a California retreat...Categorized as:
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![Four Major Plays: A Doll's House / Ghosts / Hedda Gabler / The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen, James McFarlane]()
Four Major Plays: A Doll's House / Ghosts / Hedda Gabler / The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen, James McFarlane
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsTaken from the highly acclaimed Oxford Ibsen, this collection of Ibsen's plays includes A Doll's House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler and The Master Builder... -
![Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos]()
Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsThe complex moral ambiguities of seduction and revenge make Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. The subject of major film and stage adaptations, the novel's prime movers, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, form an unholy alliance and turn seduction into a game - a game which they must win...Categorized as:
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![Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose]()
Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsA landmark American drama that inspired a classic film and a Broadway revival—featuring an introduction by David MametA blistering character study and an examination of the American melting pot and the judicial system that keeps it in check, Twelve Angry Men holds at its core a deeply patriotic faith in the U.S. legal system...Categorized as:
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![Selected European Short Stories (Classic Books on CD Collection) [UNABRIDGED] by Guy de Maupassant, Saki]()
Selected European Short Stories (Classic Books on CD Collection) [UNABRIDGED] by Guy de Maupassant, Saki
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsClassic favorites, include Guy de Maupassant s The Duel and The Umbrella, Saki s The Schartz-Metterklume Method, The Open Window, and The Story Teller, Anton Chekhov s The Scandal Monger and Verochka and Thomas Mann s The Wardrobe...Categorized as:
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![Selected Short Stories by William Faulkner]()
Selected Short Stories by William Faulkner
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom the Modern Library’s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by William Faulkner—also available are Snopes, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom!William Faulkner was a master of the short story...Categorized as:
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![Roman Fever (and Other Stories) by Edith Wharton]()
Roman Fever (and Other Stories) by Edith Wharton
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA Virago Modern Classic These stories - all powerful moral analyses - demonstrate the true professionalism of Edith Wharton... -
![Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb]()
Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsOriginally written and slated for publication in 1939, this long-forgotten masterpiece was shelved by Random House when The Grapes of Wrath met with wide acclaim...Categorized as:
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![The Seven That Were Hanged by Leonid Andreyev]()
The Seven That Were Hanged by Leonid Andreyev
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSergey did not know that the colonel, having locked himself all the previous night in his little study, had deliberated upon this ritual with all his power. "We must not aggravate, but ease the last moments of our son," resolved the colonel firmly, and he carefully weighed every possible phase of the conversation, every act and movement that might take place on the following day... -
![Storming Heaven by Denise Giardina]()
Storming Heaven by Denise Giardina
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAnnadel, West Virginia, was a small town rich in coal, farms, and close-knit families, all destroyed when the coal company came in. It stole everything it hadn't bothered to buy -- land deeds, private homes, and ultimately, the souls of its men and women...Categorized as:
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![The Measure of Silence by Elizabeth Langston]()
The Measure of Silence by Elizabeth Langston
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsTwo sisters fulfilling their grandfather’s dying wish uncover decades of secrets in a powerful novel about family, truth, and forgiveness.Dallas, Dealey Plaza, 1963. Nineteen-year-old Mariah Byrne is following her dream of a career in photography. One moment she’s filled with joy and hope watching the president and Mrs. Kennedy drive past...Categorized as:
historical-fiction drama family fiction historical audiobook psychological female-mc -
![Dina's Book by Herbjørg Wassmo]()
Dina's Book by Herbjørg Wassmo
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsOn the scale of Gone with the Wind and War and Peace, this grand, sweeping epic will enthrall readers just as Dina bewitches everyone she meets.Set in Norway in the mid-nineteenth century, Dina's Book presents an extraordinary heroine. Beautiful, eccentric, and tempestuous, Dina carries a terrible burden: at the age of five she accidentally causes her mother's death...Categorized as:
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![The Duke's Children by Anthony Trollope]()
The Duke's Children by Anthony Trollope
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsPlantagenet Palliser must face new challenges and a changing world if he is to hold his family together in the final installment of the Palliser Novels. After losing his devoted wife, Glencora, Duke Plantagenet Palliser takes on a task he has never had the time or skills to bother with before: dealing with his children...Categorized as:
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![Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell]()
Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAlternate-cover edition for ISBN 0865470561 / 9780865470569 can be found here The wife of a successful lawyer in 1930s Kansas City, India Bridge, tries to cope with her dissatisfaction with an easy, though empty, life.Before Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique there was Mrs...Categorized as:
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![The Ghost Road by Pat Barker]()
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAn alternate cover edition can be found here.As World War I winds to a close, two men--Dr. William Rivers, a psychologist whose dedicated healing sends men back to the brutal front, and Billy Prior, a shell-shocked soldier determined to rejoin the final English offensive--are profounded affected by the events of the era. Winner of the 1995 Booker Prize...Categorized as:
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![The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope]()
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAugustus Melmotte is a foreign-born financier with a mysterious past. When he moves his business and his family to London, the city's upper crust begins buzzing with rumors about him, and a host of characters ultimately find their lives changed because of him. He sets out to woo rich and powerful investors by hosting a lavish party... -
![The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin]()
The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsIn these four stories, Kate Chopin subtly captures the intricate interior lives of a generation of women. From the famous proto-feminist tale "The Story of an Hour" to the subtly sexy "A Respectable Woman," Chopin sheds light on the frustrations, desires, and dreams of her own era and their reverberations today...Categorized as:
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![Fifth Business by Robertson Davies]()
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsRamsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him...Categorized as:
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![The Dead by James Joyce]()
The Dead by James Joyce
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsOften cited as the best work of short fiction ever written, "The Dead" is the final short story in the 1914 collection Dubliners by James Joyce...Categorized as:
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![The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers]()
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsWith the publication of her first novel, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940...Categorized as:
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![So Big by Edna Ferber]()
So Big by Edna Ferber
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsAuthor Edna Ferber described the story of So Big as being about a "material man, son of his earth-grubbing, idealistic mother". Left an orphan at 19 years old in the late 1880s, Selina Peake needs to support herself. She leaves the city life she has known to become a teacher in the farming community of High Prairie, IL...Categorized as:
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![The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter]()
The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsDespite the enormous success--both critical and popular--of her novel Ship of Fools, Katherine Anne Porter's reputation as one of America's most distinguished writers rest chiefly on her superb short stories. This volume brings together the collections Flowering Judas; Pale Horse, Pale Rider; and The Leaning Tower as well as four stories not available elsewhere in book form.Go little book.. -
![On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin]()
On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLewis and Benjamin Jones, identical twins, were born with the century on a farm on the English-Welsh border. For eighty years they live on the farm--sharing the same clothes, tilling the same soil, sleeping in the same bed. Their lives and the lives of their neighbors--farmers, drovers, clergymen, traders, coffin-makers--are only obliquely touched by the chaos of twentieth-century progress... -
![Mr. Bridge by Evan S. Connell]()
Mr. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWalter Bridge is an ambitious lawyer who redoubles his efforts and time at the office whenever he senses that his family needs something, even when what they need is more of him and less of his money. Affluence, material assets, and comforts create a cocoon of community respectability that cloaks the void within - not the skeleton in the closet but a black hole swallowing the whole household...Categorized as:
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![A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams]()
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Rated: 3.98 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsThe Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Circle Award winning play—reissued with an introduction by Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williams’ essay “The World I Live In...Categorized as:
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![The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White]()
The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFollowing A Boy's Own Story (now a classic of American fiction) and his richly acclaimed The Beautiful Room Is Empty, here is the eagerly awaited final volume of Edmund White's groundbreaking autobiographical trilogy...Categorized as:
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![Selected European Short Stories (Classic Books on CD Collection) [UNABRIDGED] by Guy de Maupassant, Saki](https://48f-1.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/books/small/6239ffddd63f4e53714f1ab6.jpg)
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