Books like 'Lost Illusions'
Readers who enjoyed Lost Illusions 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
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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The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 65 ratingsIn Gustave Doré, one of the most prolific and successful book illustrators of the late 19h century, Edgar Allan Poe's renowned poem The Raven found perhaps its most perfect artistic interpreter. Doré's dreamlike, otherworldly style, tinged with melancholy, seems ideally matched to the bleak despair of Poe's celebrated work, among the most popular American poems ever written...Categorized as:
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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... -
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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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Condemned & Admired: The Earl's Cunning Wife by Bree Wolf
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA French privateer’s daughter. A marquess’s son. And a chance encounter on the high seas. Twelve years ago, Lady Silcox fled England with her six-year-old daughter Violet to spare her the life she herself had been forced into: an arranged marriage to an older man... -
The Tell-Tale Heart, Plus 3 other Tales of Mystery, Suspense by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 71 ratingsThe Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan PoeAdventures of the Noble Bachelorby Sir Arthur Conan DoyleThe Kitchen Table by Alan KingSight Unseen by Dorothy DavisIn the first volume of Mystery Theatre we present the "Tell Tale-Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe. It is a frightening story of a troubled man's conscience driving him insane...Categorized as:
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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... -
Sacrificed & Reclaimed: The Soldier's Daring Widow by Bree Wolf
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA grieving widow. A tortured hero. And a fateful love. EDWARD DUNNING had it all: a beautiful home, two adorable children and a wife who was his other half. Only he wanted more. He wanted more than an ordinary life. So he went to war. And did not return. In the blink of an eye, MEAGAN DUNNING lost her husband, her future, her dreams...Categorized as:
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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
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
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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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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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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What You Promised by Adele Clee
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsHe promised his name and his protection - but he never promised his love.Matthew Chandler built his fortune catering to the debauched antics of the ton. But one turn of the cards threatens everything he’s worked hard to achieve. Suspecting foul play at the gaming table, Matthew needs time and money if he has any hope of uncovering the plot to ruin him...Categorized as:
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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...Categorized as:
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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... -
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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Destroyed & Restored: The Baron's Courageous Wife by Bree Wolf
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA fearful lady. A shamed lord. And a hand at cards that will change both their lives. Terrified of her father’s temper, LADY ADELAIDE has lived a life of complete obedience. However, now, when her father threatens to gamble away her hand in marriage in the next card game, she turns to a trusted friend for help...Categorized as:
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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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Ruined & Redeemed: The Earl's Fallen Wife by Bree Wolf
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsShe was the victim of a heinous crime. Then, she sought revenge. He seeks to punish his father And finds more than he bargained for. Once Lady Charlotte Frampton had been a young debutante, hoping to find a husband who would win her heart. Then, one night shattered everything and turned her life into a nightmare and herself into a monster...Categorized as:
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The Hound of the Baskervilles, with "the Adventure of the Speckled Band" by Arthur Conan Doyle
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–02) is Arthur Conan Doyle’s most celebrated Sherlock Holmes adventure. At the end of the yew tree path of his ancestral home, Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead. Close by are the footprints of a gigantic hound. Called to investigate, Holmes seems to face a supernatural foe...Categorized as:
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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... -
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... -
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The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsMuch against his will, the Duke of Omnium consents to lead a coalition government. The Duchess quickly becomes a social figure of great power: with abounding and sometimes indiscriminate hospitality she strives to consolidate his support. Together they make their way to the centre of society and, like Phineas Finn before them, they find it hollow...Categorized as:
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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
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 Beast Within by Émile Zola
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsHis haunting, impressionistic study of a man's slow corruption by jealousy, Emile Zola's The Beast Within (La Bete Humaine) is translated from the French with an introduction and notes by Roger Whitehouse in Penguin Classics.Roubaud is consumed by a jealous rage when he discovers a sordid secret about his young wife's past...Categorized as:
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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
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...Categorized as:
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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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The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 61 ratingsBest known for the 1892 title story of this collection, a harrowing tale of a woman's descent into madness, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote more than 200 other short stories. Seven of her finest are reprinted here...Categorized as:
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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 28 ratings&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LI&&RThe Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr...Categorized as:
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Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratings'What! to come here a stranger, a young, unknown, and unfriended stranger, and tell us, in the name of the bishop his master, that we are ignorant of our duties, old-fashioned, and useless!' Trollope's comic masterpiece of plotting and backstabbing opens as the Bishop of Barchester lies on his deathbed...Categorized as:
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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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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
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.. -
Phineas Redux: Special Edition by Anthony Trollope
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe fourth novel in Trollope's Palliser series, Phineas Redux stands on its own as a compelling work of political intrigue, personal crisis, and romantic jealousy. Phineas Finn lives quietly in Dublin, resigned to the fact that his political career is over and coming to terms with the death of his wife...Categorized as:
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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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Abandoned & Protected: The Marquis' Tenacious Wife by Bree Wolf
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsHe forced her hand. Now, she will deny him her heart. After what her father did to her mother, Henrietta’s worst fears are to be realised when her uncle decides to marry her off to a Scot. Gentleman or not, Henrietta knows that at his core he is still a barbarian...Categorized as:
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Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright by Steven Millhauser
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsEdwin Mullhouse, a novelist at 10, is mysteriously dead at 11. As a memorial, Edwin's bestfriend, Jeffrey Cartwright, decides that the life of this great American writer must be told. He follows Edwin's development from his preverbal first noises through his love for comic books to the fulfillment of his literary genius in the remarkable novel, Cartoons...Categorized as:
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Splendor in the Grass by adapted from the screenplay by William Inge F. Andrew Leslie, William Inge
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsF. Andrew Leslie, adapted from the screenplay by William Inge, Inge, William, Leslie, F...Categorized as:
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Noble Pleasures Collection by Anthea Lawson
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsEnter an era of dashing dukes in disguise, secret-keeping viscounts, and earls trying (and failing) to resist temptation! This sampler collection of novels and novellas from RITA-nominated, USA Today bestselling author Anthea Lawson is full of spicy (and a few sweet) delights...Categorized as:
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Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsBazarov—a gifted, impatient, and caustic young man—has journeyed from school to the home of his friend Arkady Kirsanov. But soon Bazarov’s outspoken rejection of authority and social conventions touches off quarrels, misunderstandings, and romantic entanglements that will utterly transform the Kirsanov household and reflect the changes taking place across all of nineteenth-century Russia...Categorized as:
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White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 4.01 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsWhite Nights, is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky that was published in 1848. Set in St. Petersburg, this is the story of a young man fighting his inner restlessness. A light and tender narrative, it delves into the torment and guilt of unrequited love. Both protagonists suffer from a deep sense of alienation that initially brings them together...Categorized as:
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The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSet in France during the days immediately before World War II, this is the story of Mathieu, a French professor of philosophy obsessed with the idea of freedom. Translated from the French by Eric Sutton...Categorized as:
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Amok by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsOn a sweltering ocean-liner traveling from India to Europe a passenger tells his story--the tale of a doctor in the Dutch East Indies torn between his duty and the pull of his emotions; a tale of power and maddening desire, of pride, shame, and a headlong flight into folly.'Amok' is one of the most intense and incisive of the tales that brought Stefan Zweig worldwide fame...Categorized as:
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The Ladies' Paradise by Émile Zola
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe Ladies Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) recounts the rise of the modern department store in late nineteenth-century Paris. The store is a symbol of capitalism, of the modern city, and of the bourgeois family: it is emblematic of changes in consumer culture, and the changes in sexual attitudes and class relations taking place at the end of the century... -
The Invisible Collection / Buchmendel by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe first of these two Stefan Zweig tales, The Invisible Collection, is about a blind collector of rare prints who does not realize that his priceless Durers and Rembrandts have been sold by his family and replaced by blank sheets of paper. The second is the touching tale of Buchmendel, an old bookdealer who is himself a universal catalogue, entirely devoted to his trade...Categorized as:
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The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone by Sophocles
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 52 ratingsEnglish versions of Sophocles’ three great tragedies based on the myth of Oedipus, translated for a modern audience by two gifted poets...
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