Heartbreaking Fiction
Explore our curated list of heartbreaking fiction books that will tug at your heartstrings. Discover emotional, tear-jerking stories perfect for fans of poignant and soul-stirring reads.
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The American
by Henry James
A reprint of Henry James' "The America" that includes a textual history of the novel, background and source materials, and critical articles by James and others.
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Thais by Anatole France, Fiction, Suspense
by Anatole France
A dryly tongue-in cheek novel of spiritual enormity from Anatole France, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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The Good Soldier
by Ford Madox Ford
One of the most important works of twentieth-century British literature, The Good Soldier addresses the lives and interrelationships between two couples: one American, one British. A tragicomic novel of manners, in which John Dowell narrates the disintegration of both his own and another marriage, the work’s depiction of passion and intrigue offers an ironic reading of Edwardian-era values. The Broadview edition features the text of the first edition of the novel published by John Lane and The Bodley Head in 1915. It also includes: other writings by Ford Madox Ford (“On Heaven,” excerpts from Henry James: A Critical Study, “On Impressionism,” and “Techniques”); contemporary reviews; and Ezra Pound’s obituary of Ford Madox Ford.
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Cleopatra
by Henry Rider Haggard
This Elibron Classics title is a reprint of the original edition published by Bernhard Tauchnitz in Leipzig, 1889.
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Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton
Set against the frozen waste of a harsh New England winter, Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome is a tale of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual tensions, published with an introduction and notes by Elizabeth Ammons in Penguin Classics. Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeenie. But when Zeenie's vivacious cousin enters their household as a 'hired girl', Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. In one of American fiction's finest and most intense narratives, Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio toward their tragic destinies. Different in both tone and theme from Wharton's other works, Ethan Frome has become perhaps her most enduring and most widely read novel. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.