Accused of political subversion as a young man, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was sentenced to four years of hard labor at a Siberian prison camp — a horrifying experience from which he developed this astounding semi-autobiographical memoir of a man condemned to ten years of servitude for murdering his wife.

As with a number of the author's other works, this profoundly influential novel brilliantly explores his characters' thoughts while probing the depths of the human soul. Describing in relentless detail the physical and mental suffering of the convicts, Dostoyevsky's character never loses faith in human qualities and the goodness of man.

A haunting and remarkable work filled with wonder and resignation, The House of the Dead ranks among the Russian novelist's greatest masterpieces.

Richard Russo, at the very top of his game, returns to North Bath, in upstate New York, and the characters from Nobody's Fool (1993).

The irresistible Sully, who in the intervening years has come by some unexpected good fortune, is staring down a VA cardiologist's estimate that he has only a year or two left. It's hard work trying to keep this news from the most important people in his life: Ruth, the married woman he carried on with for years; the ultra-hapless Rub Squeers, who worries that he and Sully aren't still best friends; and Sully's son and grandson, for whom he was mostly an absentee figure (and now a regretful one).

We also enjoy the company of Doug Raymer, the chief of police who's obsessing over the identity of the man his wife might've been about to run off with before dying in a freak accident. Bath's mayor, the former academic Gus Moynihan, whose wife problems are, if anything, even more pressing. Then there's Carl Roebuck, whose lifelong run of failing upward might now come to ruin. And finally, there's Charice Bond - a light at the end of the tunnel that is Chief Raymer's office - as well as her brother, Jerome, who might well be the train barreling into the station.

Everybody's Fool is filled with humor, heart, hard times, and people you can't help but love, possibly because their various faults make them so stridently human.

The Modern Man is a philosophical divagation on the evil banality of daily acts. The author, Cristiane Serruya, dedicates herself to dissect a few hours of a man's thoughts, feelings, and life in his non-functioning world, which is habitually regulated by tic-tacs. This contemporary text explores human anguishes and desires, needs and projects, dreams and utopias, leading the reader to rethink their daily acts.

Written in a direct, sensible, and poetic style, the book offers a unique perspective on the modern state of man, inviting introspection and reflection.

In Chris Bohjalian's astonishing novel, nothing is what it at first seems. Not the bucolic Vermont back roads college sophomore Laurel Estabrook likes to bike. Not the savage assault she suffers toward the end of one of her rides. And certainly not Bobbie Crocker, the elderly man with a history of mental illness whom Laurel comes to know through her work at a Burlington homeless shelter in the years subsequent to the attack.

In his moments of lucidity, the gentle, likable Bobbie alludes to his earlier life as a successful photographer. Laurel finds it hard to believe that this destitute, unstable man could once have chronicled the lives of musicians and celebrities, but a box of photographs and negatives discovered among Bobbie's meager possessions after his death lends credence to his tale.

How could such an accomplished man have fallen on such hard times? Becoming obsessed with uncovering Bobbie's past, Laurel studies his photographs, tracking down every lead they provide into the mystery of his life before homelessness—including links to the rich neighborhoods of her own Long Island childhood and to the earlier world of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, with its larger-than-life characters, elusive desires, and haunting sorrows.

In a narrative of dazzling invention, literary ingenuity, and psychological complexity, Bohjalian engages issues of homelessness and mental illness by evoking the humanity that inhabits the core of both. At the same time, his tale is fast-paced and riveting—The Double Bind combines the suspense of a thriller with the emotional depths of the most intimate drama.

The breathtaking surprises of its final pages will leave readers stunned, overwhelmed by the poignancy of life's fleeting truths, as caught in Bobbie Crocker's photographs and in Laurel Estabrook's painful pursuit of Bobbie's past—and her own.

In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness—a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt of by any other mind.

Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity by delineating the office politics surrounding a magazine profile of an artist who produces miniature sculptures in an anatomically inconceivable way ("The Suffering Channel").

Or capture the ache of love's breakdown in the painfully polite apologies of a man who believes his wife is hallucinating the sound of his snoring ("Oblivion"). Each of these stories is a complete world, as fully imagined as most entire novels, at once preposterously surreal and painfully immediate.

Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is best known for his monumental works War and Peace and Anna Karenina, commonly regarded as some of the greatest novels ever written. However, his mastery extends to short stories as well, and this volume includes four of his longest and most distinguished tales, which have stood the test of time.

In the early story 'Family Happiness', Tolstoy delves into courtship and marriage from the perspective of a young wife. 'The Kreutzer Sonata' offers a terrifying study of marital breakdown, while 'The Devil' provides a powerful depiction of the allure of sexual temptation. Perhaps the most profound of all, 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' explores the long agony of a man gradually coming to terms with his own mortality.

Simone de Beauvoir, novelist, dramatist, and philosopher, was the most distinguished woman writer in modern France. A leading exponent of French existentialism, her work complements, though it is independent of, that of her great friend Jean-Paul Sartre.

In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Madame de Beauvoir penetrates at once to the core ethical problems of modern man: what shall he do, how shall he go about making values, in the face of this awareness of the absurdity of his existence? She forces the reader to face the absurdity of the human condition, and then, having done so, proceeds to develop a dialectic of ambiguity which will enable him not to master the chaos, but to create with it.

This book remains a concise yet thorough examination of existence and what it means to be human.

T.J. Newton is an extraterrestrial who arrives on Earth with a desperate mission of mercy. In his quest to save his home planet, he discovers a world filled with loneliness and despair, leading to a tragic end.

Newton, an alien disguised as a human, lands in Kentucky and begins to patent advanced technology from his planet, Anthea. His goal is to amass the wealth needed to build a spaceship to rescue the last survivors of his devastated world.

However, instead of finding the help he seeks, Newton encounters self-destruction and succumbs to human afflictions like alcoholism, abandoning his mission. This poignant tale explores the human condition and the existential loneliness that resides within us all.

Five Plays is a collection of Anton Chekhov's most celebrated works, bringing together the quintessence of Russian drama. The plays included are:

• Ivanov
• The Seagull
• Uncle Vanya
• The Three Sisters
• The Cherry Orchard

Chekhov's work is renowned for its lyricism, humor, and pathos, redefining dramatic conventions and paving the way for modern theater. Through these plays, Chekhov explores the vulnerabilities, needs, and neuroses of his characters, capturing the essence of the human condition with poignant realism.

Each play in this collection invites the reader to immerse themselves in the intricacies of Russian society, offering a unique perspective on the complexities of life, love, and loss.