Upon its first appearance in 1895, Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure shocked Victorian critics and readers with a frank depiction of sexuality and an unbridled indictment of the institutions of marriage, education, and religion - reportedly causing one Anglican bishop to order the book publicly burned. The experience so exhausted Hardy that he never wrote a work of fiction again. Rich in symbolism, Jude the Obscure is the story of Jude Fawley and his...

A woman in her thirties begins to question the routine and predictability of her days. In everybody's eyes, she has a perfect life: happy marriage, children, and a career. Yet what she feels is an enormous apathy. All that changes when she encounters a successful politician who had, years earlier, been her high school boyfriend. As she rediscovers the passion missing from her life, she will face a life-altering choice.--Publisher.

"Marin had the perfect life. Married to her college sweetheart, she owns a chain of upscale hair salons, and Derek runs his own company. They're admired in their community and are a loving family--until their world falls apart the day their son Sebastian is taken. A year later, Marin is a shadow of herself. The FBI search has gone cold. The publicity has faded. She and her husband rarely speak. She hires a P.I. to pick up where the police left off,...

A taut, complex portrait of a marriage haunted by secrets, in which a woman finds herself traveling to Greece in search of her missing, estranged husband.--

Graham and Annie have been married for nearly thirty years. Their seemingly effortless devotion has long been the envy of their circle of friends and acquaintances. By all appearances, they are a golden couple. Graham is a bookseller, a big, gregarious man with large appetites--curious, eager to please, a lover of life, and the convivial host of frequent, lively parties at his and Annie's comfortable house in Cambridge. Annie, more reserved and introspective,...

Nichole, a woman in her early thirties, is recovering from a broken heart after learning her husband was having an affair and separating from him. The twist is that her mother-in-law, Leanne, is the one who told her that her son was cheating. Leanne has looked the other way for decades as HER own husband cheated, and can't bear to see her son repeating the same pattern. In telling Nichole, she also gathers the courage to leave her husband, and...

From New York Times bestselling author John Lescroart, a riveting standalone novel about the unexpected, shattering, and lethal consequences of a one-night stand on a seemingly happily married couple. Kate loves her life. At forty-four, she's happily married to her kind husband, Ron, blessed with two wonderful children, and has a beautiful home in San Francisco. Everything changes, however, when she and Ron attend a dinner party and meet another couple,...

While an ex-con sets out to exact revenge against his former wife for her role in his imprisonment, a woman in Florida is convinced by a seductive stranger to quit her dead-end job in order to pursue a more exciting life.

First serialized in 1924 and published as a complete novel in 1925, "The Painted Veil" is the powerful novel of transgression and redemption by popular and prolific British author W. Somerset Maugham. "The Painted Veil" tells the story of the lovely and superficial Kitty Garstin and her unhappy marriage to Walter Fane, a quiet and honorable man. Kitty agrees to marry Walter not because she loves him, but because she fears being upstaged by her younger...

A Japanese novel on a married businessman who has an affair with the girl of his youth. Hajime's relationship with Shimamoto had always been chaste, now they both make up for it--25 years later.