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"Father Goriot" is one of Balzac's most famous novels, which are included in the cycle "Human Comedy". The main events of the novel take place in Paris, in the boarding house of Madame Voque, tucked away at the bottom of the street Nev-Saint-Genevieve, where for a small fee live inconspicuous, shabby lives of life. In the attic of this boarding house otest trades its miserable existence the protagonist of the novel Papa Goriot - once a successful bread merchant. Like King Lear, he spent almost all of his fortune raising his beloved daughters. Having provided each rich dowry, he left himself only a small sum, in the hope that he would always be able to find their love and support. But his hopes were sent to dust. Having successfully married and became secular ladies, the daughters began to be ashamed of their father and remembered him only when they needed money. Gradually, Papa Goriot gave them everything he had and was left with nothing. He became the laughing stock of the whole guesthouse, the tenants despised him, and only one, poor student Eugene de Rastignyak, looked at the old man with sympathy...

"The first time I met Terry Patten was about the Patterson-Pratt case of forgery, and at a time when I was most inclined to give up such pleasure.Our firm rarely dealt with criminal cases, but the Patterson family members were longtime clients, and when the trouble came, they certainly turned to us. In other circumstances, such an important case would have been assigned to someone older, but it so happened that I was the one who made the will for Patterson Sr. on the night before his suicide, so I was the one who put the brunt of the work on me. The most unpleasant thing in all this history was the bad fame. If we had not been able to make it public, it would not have been so bad, but it was physically impossible: Terry Patten was following in our footsteps, and no later than a week later all the newspapers in New York came upon us with his submission..."

One of the most famous humorists in world literature, O. Henry created a unique panorama of American life at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, in grotesque situations conveyed the contrasts and paradoxes of his era, which opened the space for people with business acumen, which the game of chance then elevates to the top of success, then tosses to the bottom of life.

A parable full of humor and sarcasm. Can a modest farm become a symbol of totalitarian society? Yes of course. But... how will this society see its "citizens" - animals doomed to slaughter?

"Soldier Is Always a Soldier" is the most famous novel by the English writer Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939), whose works, which are widely and deservedly popular in his homeland and certainly belonging to the notable phenomena of European culture of the 20th century, remained still unknown to Russian readers.

"When Frank Algernon Cowperwood came out of Philadelphia Correctional Prison, he realized that his former life in his hometown was over. Youth passed, and with it crumbled to dust his first audacious financial plans. We're going to have to start over..."

The elderly hunter Allan Quaterman agrees to accompany Captain John Goode and Sir Henry Curtis on a dangerous expedition to the red-hot African desert. Brave travelers need to find the brother of the noble Sir Henry, missing while searching for the legendary treasury of Solomon. By fate, the participants of the campaign face insurmountable, at first glance, difficulties. But sincere friendship and nobility, courage and mutual help, experience and ingenuity help them with dignity to get out of all dangerous and confusing situations. The main characters will have to go the hard way and survive incredible adventures to reach the mysterious diamond spears of King Solomon.

The novel by the famous American writer Harriet Beecher-Stowe (1811-1896) "Uncle Tom's Cabin" appeared in a separate edition in 1852, when the struggle against slavery became an urgent necessity and, according to President Lincoln, was one of the reasons for the "great war" - the armed confrontation between North and South for the liberation of the black population.

The novel shows a difficult path to the writer's fame of a guy from a working family. Martin's fate was determined by the meeting with Ruth - a girl from a rich family, an unearthly creature who fell in love with an extraordinary young man. Under the influence of love, close to worship, Martin changes externally and internally, departs from the people of his circle and... gradually understands the insignificance and abomination of the world of his beloved.

One of the most amazing novels of the Enlightenment addresses the age-old theme of the confrontation of pure soul and true evil. What to do a young man who was left without a penny in his pocket? All his dreams and hopes are ready to collapse overnight, but fate offers him to make a deal with the devil. But the granted deliverance will either become the happiness of the main character, or his destruction, because every desire is followed by payment at a cost to life. Honore de Balzac's work is part of an epic series that includes more than 90 novels, novels and short stories intertwined with a single idea.

"The Mayor of Kesterbridge" is one of the best novels by the outstanding writer of English realism Thomas Hardy (1840- 1928) The novel is set in the 1920s and 19th centuries, in one of the southwestern cities of England. The story is based on actual events and facts. The hero of the novel Michael Henchard - an agricultural worker, a laborer, whose need drives to the city to earn money, where he, a man of strong passions, experiences a corrupting influence. He turns into his own power egotist and ambitious, who not only disfigures the lives of others, but breaks and cripples his own life.

«... I was lying on the bed without undressing, and no matter how I struggled with the slumber, but it was at this very moment that she began to pump me with her languor breath. Following the whisper there was a cautious but persistent knock of fingers on the glass. This was called to me by our old chef Emelian Ivanovich, with whom we persuaded to go at night to catch crayfish meat. I got up and, trying not to make any noise, opened the window. A minute later I found myself on the ground, near Emelian Ivanovich, trembling and trembling and from the excitement excited in me by the impending pleasure..."

Vanity Fair is a classic novel about the Napoleonic Wars, where the reader is presented with a vivid panorama of the life of England in the early 19th century. This is a real epic, in which not only unfolds a whole layer of history, but also reveals the life of various social strata: aristocrats, officials, members of parliament, landlords and others. Their lives resemble a fair where everything can be bought and sold, and the laws of morality and honor are not respected. William Thackeray talks about the struggle between the literary author and the characters leading a parasitic and hypocritical way of life. Subtle observations of the life of that time are riddled with irony and sarcasm. Vanity Fair has been filmed more than ten times, and its adaptation for the theater is still widely used by the best directors in Europe.