Guy de Maupassant

“Jeanne, a convent-bred young noblewoman of Normandy, leaves school full of dreams of love, and finds instead a mean, unfaithful husband, a lifetime of small betrayals, and a son who breaks her heart — the humble truth of one woman's life, from seventeen to old age.”

“Georges Duroy, a penniless ex-soldier with a fine moustache and no scruples, arrives in the Paris newspaper world and climbs — through women, borrowed talent and political scandal — from a clerk's stool to wealth, a title and a seat at the gates of power.”

“At a little spa in the volcanic hills of Auvergne, a financier builds a new health resort on a peasant's land, while his young wife, sent there to take the waters, falls passionately in love with her brother's friend — a love that will not survive the child it brings.”

“In Le Havre, a family friend dies and leaves his whole fortune to the younger of two brothers. The elder, a jealous young doctor, begins to wonder why — and the question he cannot stop asking will tear his family's quiet life apart.”

“Olivier Bertin, a celebrated Paris painter, has loved the Countess de Guilleroy for twelve years — until her daughter comes home from the country, the living image of the young woman he first painted, and the ageing artist finds himself falling in love with the past.”

“André Mariolle, a rich, idle, sensitive Parisian, falls hopelessly in love with Michèle de Burne, a brilliant young widow who gathers admirers in her salon like trophies — and who can give him everything except the one thing he wants: her heart.”