Ten short novels by a variety of 19th and 20th century writers: Fyodor Dostoevsky - Notes from Underground; Leo Tolstoy - The death of Ivan Ilych; E. M. Forster - The machine stops; Joseph Conrad - The secret sharer; Thomas Mann - Death in Venice; Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis; Flannery O'Connor - The displaced room; Saul Bellow- Seize the day; Gabriel Garcia Marquez - No one to write the Colonel; Doris Lessing - The temptation of Jack Orkney.