The publication in 1857 of Madame Bovary, with its vivid depictions of sex and adultery, incited a backlash of immorality charges. The novel tells the story of Emma Bovary, a doctor's wife bored and unfulfilled by marriage and motherhood. She embarks upon a series of affairs in search of passion and excitement, but is unable to achieve the splendid life for which she yearns. Instead, she finds herself trapped in a downward spiral that inexorably leads...

Catherine Lacey (Nobody Is Ever Missing), Akhil Sharma (Family Life), Francoise Mouly (art editor at The New Yorker), and Kate Zambreno (Heroines, Green Girl) discuss the acclaimed novel in celebration of its 30th anniversary. Marguerite Duras' (Hiroshima Mon Amour) haunting, luminous book tells of the tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her Chinese lover in pre-war Indochina. With a reading by Kathleen Chalfant (The Affair, Angels...

In Terenure, a pleasant suburb of Dublin, in the winter of 2009, it has snowed. Gina Moynihan recalls the trail of lust and happenstance that brought her to fall for "the love of her life," Sean Vallely. As the city outside comes to a halt, Gina remembers that days of their affair in one hotel room or another, long afternoons made blank by bliss and denial. Now Gina walks through the weather to meet a girl she calls Sean's "beautiful mistake":...

From the thrilling imagination of bestselling, award-winning Colm T?ib?n comes a retelling of the story of Clytemnestra?spectacularly audacious, violent, vengeful, lustful, and instantly compelling?and her children ... In House of Names, Colm T?ib?n brings a modern sensibility and language to an ancient classic, and gives this extraordinary character new life, so that we not only believe Clytemnestra?s thirst for revenge, but applaud it. He brilliantly...

Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting myth. Nicole believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life, that forever feeling slightly out of place was her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as she grew up - facing prejudice...