Read The Necklace

Two aristocrats play seduction as a game by letter, in the last decade before the guillotine.

London and Paris during the Terror; "it is a far, far better thing that I do".

D Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis against the Cardinal; all for one.

Jean Valjean, a loaf of bread and nineteen years; Hugo's Paris from the sewers to the barricades.

Quasimodo, Esmeralda and the cathedral Hugo wrote the book to save.

Julien Sorel climbs through Restoration France by seduction; Stendhal's ambition novel.

The madeleine and the first volume of In Search of Lost Time; start here.

Expatriates drink through Paris and Pamplona; Hemingway's lost generation.