Anna Karenina

Some people say Anna Karenina is the single greatest novel ever written, which makes about as much sense to me as trying to determine the world's greatest color. But there is no doubt that Anna Karenina, generally considered Tolstoy's best book, is definitely one ripping great read. Anna, miserable in her loveless marriage, does the barely thinkable and succumbs to her desires for the dashing Vronsky. I don't want to give away the ending, but I will say that 19th-century Russia doesn't take well to that sort of thing.

• War and Peace (Vintage Classics)
• The Brothers Karamazov
• Crime and Punishment: Pevear & Volokhonsky Translation (Vintage Classics)
• Claire of the Sea Light (Vintage Contemporaries)
• A Hero of Our Time (Penguin Classics)
• Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy (Perennial Classics)
• Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
• Dead Souls
• Fathers and Children (Second Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)
• Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse (Oxford World's Classics)