Have a literary affair!
Discover iconic affair books and literary fiction exploring passion, betrayal, and desire—from *Anna Karenina* and *The Great Gatsby* to Djuna Barnes’ *Nightwood*.
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A Severed Head
by Iris Murdoch
A novel about the frightfulness and ruthlessness of being in love, from the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea, The Sea Martin Lynch-Gibson believes he can possess both a beautiful wife and a delightful lover. But when his wife, Antonia, suddenly leaves him for her psychoanalyst, Martin is plunged into an intensive emotional reeducation. He attempts to behave beautifully and sensibly. Then he meets a woman whose demonic splendor at first repels him and later arouses a consuming and monstrous passion. As his Medusa informs him, “this is nothing to do with happiness.” A Severed Head was adapted for a successful stage production in 1963 and was later made into a film starring Claire Bloom, Lee Remick, Richard Attenborough, and Ian Holm.
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Anna Karenina
by graf Leo Tolstoy
Presents the classic nineteenth-century Russian novel in which a young woman is destroyed when she attempts to live outside the moral law of her society.
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Nightwood
by Djuna Barnes
The fiery and enigmatic masterpiece--one of the greatest novels of the Modernist era.
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On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
Chronicles the way of life of the beat generation as Dean Moriarty speeds across America.
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The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A mysterious American millionaire tries to recapture the sweetheart of his youth, which results in tragedy.
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Tropic of Cancer
by Henry Miller
The account of a young writer and his friends in free-wheeling Paris.
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Winesburg, Ohio
by Sherwood Anderson
Winesburg, Ohio, gave birth to the American story cycle, for which William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and later writers were forever indebted. Defying the prudish sensibilities of his time, Anderson never omitted anything adult, harsh, or shocking; instead he embraced frankness, truth, and the hidden depths everyone possesses. Here we meet young George Willard, a newspaper reporter with dreams; Kate Swift, the schoolteacher who attempts to seduce him; Wing Biddlebaum, a berry picker whose hands are the source of both his renown and shame; Alice Hindman, who has one last adventure; and all the other complex human beings whose portraits brought American literature into the modern age. Their stories make up a classic and place its author alongside the best of American writers. With an Introduction by Irving Howe and an Afterword by Dean Koontz
