This book contains the best sayings of Mark Twain: about money and work, about age and habits, about God and the Bible, about truth and lies - and about everything else. Many of them are published for the first time.

lows the gripping tale of Lucas Beauchamp, a proud and defiant African-American man accused of murder. The narrative unfolds through the eyes of Charles Mallison, one of the young white boy, and his uncle Gavin Stevens, a lawyer. When Lucas is wrongfully charged with killing a white man, Charles and Gavin take it upon themselves to unravel the truth and ensure justice prevails. Their quest for...

In Soviet Russia in 1927, a former member of nobility, Ippolit Vorobyaninov, works as a desk clerk, until his mother-in-law reveals on her deathbed that her family jewelry had been hidden from the Bolsheviks in one of the twelve chairs from the family’s dining room set. Those chairs, along with all other personal property, had been expropriated by the government after the Russian Revolution. He...

M. Zoshchenko is one of the largest Russian writers of the 20th century, whose work goes beyond the satirical genre. This book presents Zoshchenko the comedian, Zoshchenko the philosopher, Zoshchenko the continuer of the classical traditions of Russian prose. The Blue Book is ironic and, together with the lyrical look at the history of human relations. The text of The Blue Book is published...

White Nights is a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, originally published in 1848, early in the writer's career. Like many of Dostoyevsky's stories, White Nights is told in first person by a nameless narrator; the narrator is living in Saint Petersburg and suffers from loneliness. He gets to know and falls in love with a young woman, but the love remains unrequited as the woman misses her lover...

The Petersburg Stories constitute Gogol's finest work, on which his fame is justly based. The plays included in this volume are 'The Government Inspector' and 'The Marriage'.