An anthology of literary love stories—in a beautiful hardcover Pocket Classics edition—perfect for Valentine’s Day. Here are nineteen stories from a rich array of writers, and here is every kind of romantic entanglement: from the raw, erotic passion of D. H. Lawrence and Colette to the wickedly cynical comedy of Dorothy Parker and Roald Dahl, from the yearning of unrequited romantic illusions in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Winter Dreams” to the agonizing madness of jealousy in Vladimir Nabokov’s “That in Aleppo Once . . .” The objects of passion in these stories range from a glamorous silent-movie starlet in Elizabeth Bowen’s haunting “Dead Mabelle” and a faithful ghost in Yasunari Kawabata's "Immortality" to a heart surgeon in Margaret Atwood’s “Bluebeard’s Egg” who spends his days penetrating the mysteries of the human heart but who seems oddly emotionally opaque himself. Jhumpa Lahiri plumbs the despair of a husband and wife sundered by tragedy while Lorrie Moore movingly portrays a couple brought together by it. Katherine Mansfield, Tobias Wolff, and William Trevor explore the intricacies of long-term relationships, while Guy de Maupassant, Italo Calvino, and T. C. Boyle portray the elemental force of love in extremely different ways. As alluring, moving, and intoxicating as its timeless theme, this collection makes an enticing gift for lovers at any stage of life. “ Love Stories (Everyman's Library) encompasses everything from the unabashedly erotic (Colette) to the sardonically doomed (Dorothy Parker). In literature, as in love, there's something for everyone." – Vogue “Love in its vagrant and contradictory forms animate these classic stories from Colette, de Maupassant, D. H. Lawrence, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Dorothy Parker, and the strong contemporary tales by Tobias Wolff, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lorrie Moore, and Ali Smith. . . . Tesdell has an especially good eye for a classic writer’s most resonant story.” – Cleveland Plain Dealer “This is a book about love in which none of the stories lapses into sentimentality. . . . Wonderfully amusing . . . fabulously funny . . . I read this book with a mounting sense of marvel. It is a triumph of the anthologist’s skill: moving, artful, unceasingly entertaining. . . . This is a book to cherish, to give to your lover, and to escape joyfully into at the first sign of flying saucers.” – The Spectator “A more cynical celebration than Valentine’s Day, which exists chiefly to sell greeting cards and get absent-minded men in trouble, is hard to imagine. Fortunately, Diana Secker Tesdell and Everyman’s Pocket Classics offer an antidote to this coarsening of human emotion. Love Stories, a collection of tales by notable authors past and present, show yet again the capacity of literature—in the form of clear-sighted sensibility and the application of mildly elevated language—to renew the weariest heart. . . . The book as a whole … is a matter of deep reading pleasure, refracting the awful beauty and power of love in varied aspects, times, cultures.” – South Florida Sun-Sentinel “A marvelous Valentine’s Day gift for literary lovers.” – St. Louis Post-Dispatch Diana Secker Tesdell is the editor of the Everyman's Pocket Classic anthologies Christmas Stories, Love Stories, Dog Stories, Cat Stories, Horse Stories , New York Stories , Bedtime Stories, Stories of Art and Artists, Stories of Fatherhood , Stories of Motherhood, Stories of the Sea , and Stories from the Kitchen, and of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poet Lullabies and Poems for Children. GUY DE MAUPASSANT CLAIR DE LUNE Abbe´ Marignan's martial name suited him well. He was a tall, thin priest, fanatic, excitable, yet upright. All his beliefs were fixed, never varying.He believed sincerely that he knew his God, understoodHis plans, desires and intentions. When he walked with long strides along the garden walk of his little country parsonage, he would sometimes ask himself the question: 'Why has God done this?' And he would dwell on this continually, putting himself in the place of God, and he almost invariably found an answer. He would never have cried out in an outburst of pious humility: 'Thy ways, O Lord, are past finding out.' He said to himself: 'I am the servant of God; it is right for me to know the reason of His deeds, or to guess it if I do not know it.' Everything in nature seemed to him to have been created in accordance with an admirable and absolute logic. The 'whys' and 'becauses' always balanced. Dawn was given to make our awakening pleasant, the days to ripen the harvest, the rains to moisten it, the evenings for preparation for slumber, and the dark nights for sleep. The four seasons corresponded perfectly to the needs of agriculture, and no suspicion had ever come to the priest of the fact that nature has no intentions; that, on the contrary, everything which exists must conform to the hard demands of seasons, climates and matter. But he hated woman - hated her unconsciously, and