Anna Karenina appears to have the perfect life. Young and beautiful, she lives in a fashionable house in Moscow with her respected husband and their young son. But Anna is deeply unhappy. Her older husband bores her, and she misses the lively city she grew up in.

Beautiful, popular, and fortunate, Anna Karenina is an upright wife and mother. But her passionless marriage to a senior statesman leads her into the arms of Count Alexey Vronsky. The dashing cavalry officer stokes in her something exciting and defiant. In abandoning the rules of her noble...

Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once a historical war epic, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Noted for its mastery of realistic detail and psychological analysis, War and Peace follows the metamorphosis of five aristocratic...

In early nineteenth-century Russia, the threat of Napoleon’s invasion looms, and the lives of millions are about to be changed forever. This includes Pierre Bezúkhov, illegitimate son of an aristocrat; Andrew Bolkónski, ambitious military scion; and Natásha Rostóva, compassionate daughter...

Der 19-jährige Fürst Dmitri Nikolajitsch Nechljudow hat seine Universitätsstudien nach dem dritten Studienjahr abgebrochen. Mitja, wie der Fürst von seiner bald 50-jährigen Tante, der Gräfin Belorezkaja, gerufen wird, will sich fortan lieber vor Ort um das Wohl seiner siebenhundert leibeigenen...

Paterson Joseph, John Hurt, Lesley Manville and Harriet Walter are among the cast of BBC Radio 4's epic full-cast dramatisation. Adapted for radio by Timberlake Wertenbaker, Leo Tolstoy's epic story follows the fortunes of three Russian aristocratic families during the Napoleonic War. First...

What Is Art? is the result of fifteen years’ reflection on the nature and purpose of art. Tolstoy claims that all good art is related to the authentic life of the broader community and that the aesthetic value of a work of art is not independent of its moral content. The book is noteworthy not...

Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day, death announces...

One of the world’s greatest novelists, Leo Tolstoy was also the author of a number of superb short stories, one of his best-known being “The Kreutzer Sonata.” This macabre story involves the murder of a wife by her husband. It is a penetrating study of jealousy as well as a piercing...

A Classic Pair: A Tale of Two Cities & War and Peace brings together two unforgettable pieces of historical fiction – by turns beautiful and devastating – from nineteenth-century literary giants, Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy.

In Tolstoy's final novel, a privileged nobleman by the name of Dmitri Nekhlyudov seeks to make amends for a bad deed he committed in the past. In the process, he discovers that he has been living in a world far removed from the reality of the average person. Believing that he must right a wrong...

This collection of 11 stories spans virtually the whole of Tolstoy's creative life. While each is unique in form, as a group they are representative of his style, and touch on the central themes that surface in War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Stories as different as "The Snowstorm", "Lucerne"...

"The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity." Tolstoy’s War and Peace, written in serial format and published between 1865 and 1869, is widely regarded as a masterwork of Russian literature and one of the world’s greatest novels. This epic novel intricately weaves together the lives of...

A Confession, or My Confession, is a short work on the subject of melancholia, philosophy and religion by the acclaimed Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. It was written in 1879 to 1880, when Tolstoy was in his early fifties. The book is a brief autobiographical story of the author's struggle with a...

“There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life… that is to recognise and profess the truth.” The culmination of a lifetime of philosophical thought and consideration, The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893) is a powerful treatise on faith...

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." Resurrection, one of Leo Tolstoy’s later works, is a powerful exploration of personal morality, the possibility of redemption, and the profound impact of one’s choices on others. Privileged nobleman Dmitri...

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." This is the famous opening sentence of Tolstoi's epic love story between Anna Arkadyevna Karenina and her Count Vronsky. Anna Karenina (1877) by Leo Tolstoy is a classic story of love and tragedy against the backdrop...

Leo Tolstoy is one of the most celebrated novelists of all time. As well as writing literary classics such as Anna Karenina and War and Peace he was also the author of some hugely influential critical and philosophical works. First published in 1898 his book length essay What is Art? has lost...

Contents: - Washington Irving. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Edgar Allan Poe. The Gold Bug - Herman Melville. Bartleby, the Scrivener - Bret Harte. The Luck of Roaring Camp - Leo Tolstoy. The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Dream of a Ridiculous Man - Rudyard Kipling...

Confessions by Leo Tolstoy, narrated by Gary Middleton, is a deeply introspective and philosophical work that chronicles Tolstoy’s spiritual journey and existential search for meaning. In this profound and honest memoir, Tolstoy confronts life's most difficult questions—regarding faith...