Leo Tolstoy

While living in Russia, Tolstoy operated a tiny school for the peasant children, where they could learn to read, write, and draw. He found that there were a lack of folktales and fables to read to the children so he created his own, which are now brought together in this beautifully illustrated collection. From "The Lion and the Puppy," a story about friendship, to "The King of the Shirt," a parable about obtaining happiness, to "Escape of the

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Novelist, essayist, dramatist, and philosopher, Count Leo Tolstoy is most famous for his sprawling portraits of nineteenth-century Russian life, as recounted in Anna Karenina and War and Peace. But at the age of fifty, he endured a spiritual crisis that prompted him to seek answers from learned men on "the problem of life." When they were unable to offer solutions, he turned to the study of Christianity. Dazzled by the light of truth that illuminated...

In The death of Ivan Illych, a worldly careerist must consider death for the first time, and examine his own mortality. In The devil, a Russian landowner is overcome by a desire for one of the peasants working on his estate

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.

Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and...

Nine stories of Russia

A Russian landowner is overcome by a desire for one of the peasants working on his estate, in a short story that addresses the conflicts between desire, social norms and personal conscience, providing at the same time a further exploration of human fear and obsession.

After the scandal surrounding the tragic death of her first love, Alexis, Anna K's father takes her to South Korea to "connect with family" but it feels more like exile. Back in the states, all her friends are spending their summers in different ways, but also each needs to face the reality of their relationships in order to move forward in the wake of last school year

Presents Tolstoy's story of four Russian families caught up in the Napoleonic Wars condensed to twelve words, and accompanied by hand-felted illustrations.