Dave Courvoisier

A despondent young man without connections is trapped at a menial job running a small, remote train station. On New Year's Eve he shares a bottle of champagne with his wife, and when he drops it, she warns him that he has suffered an omen of ill-luck. HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the...

Olga Ivanovna Dymova enjoys the company of extraordinary people, all painters, writers and musicians, who look to her bright and original. All members of the small artistic circle which she is a hostess of, they all tell her she herself is a promising artist and pianist, the reputation she tries to uphold by practicing regularly and producing countless and, apparently, not very original 'etudes'.

I understood that when you love you must either, in your reasoning about that love, start from what is highest, from what is more important than happiness or unhappiness, sin or virtue in their accepted meaning, or you must not reason at all.

When several employees of the bank are arrested for corruption, the merchant Avdeyev doesn't give the ordeal much thought, figuring the men going to jail deserve it. His opinion changes however when he returns home to find his wife and son very upset -- his house had just been searched by officials in connection to the bank corruption. Avdeyev had signed papers for the bankers without knowing what they were and so had essentially signed his life away...

When Stepan Ivanovitch Kutsyn, the mayor of a town, learns that a Persian magnate is visiting, he instantly becomes intrigued. The mayor had already received various medals and badges, such as the badge of the Red Cross and the badge of the Society of Saving from Drowning. He also had made an impressive looking badge for himself to add to his jacket. The presence of the Persian magnate, Rahat-Helam, created the possibility that the mayor could receive...

The freighter came like a ghost off the hazy horizon, strafed by gunfire, abandoned by her crew…and laden with explosives. Richard Mariner is aboard a new high-tech sailing vessel when he encounters the fire ship, never realizing it's only the beginning of a deadly adventure. As Mariner sails through the Indian Ocean, he learns the prize tanker in his family's fleet, Prometheus II, has been seized by terrorists in the Persian Gulf, and his father-in-law...

As two friends are sharing stories together, the story of the man in the box comes up. The man in the box, Byelikov, was an eccentric professor that often made his coworkers feel uneasy. One day, Byelikov finds himself enamored with the sister of a new teacher at the school, Kovalenko. The prospect of a relationship between Byelikov and the sister, Varinka, excited his colleagues as they thought it might help to make him more normal and approachable....

Vel Vassilyevitch finds himself meeting with an unwanted visitor one day after lunch, an odd woman beseeching him to give him just a half hour of his time. Madam Murashkin wants Pavel to critique a play that she has written before she sets off on a voyage, and insists it will take only a half hour of his time. Unable to deny her relentless pitiful pleas, Pavel gives in and Madam Murashkin launches into her play - which turns out to take much longer...

Natalya was once a happy and radiant young woman. Now an older woman, she reflects about her youth. In particular, she thinks about the heavy emphasis she put on her wealth and the relationships and experiences that it cost her. One man, Pyotr, loved her, but they both let their different statuses in society prevent their love from having a chance. After years of unhappiness and regret, Pyotr comes to visit Natalya.

Miguev, a married, intelligent collegiate assessor, is haunted with anxiety and worry. Miguev has a secret that he doesn't want his wife, the town, or his colleagues to discover. His mistress, after becoming pregnant and having his child, has recently tried to extort money from him in exchange for her silence. She threatens to ruin his reputation and divulge his secret shame to everyone unless he pays her. In the height of his fear and worry about...