A spinster romance writer exiled to a stately hotel in Switzerland ponders love, work, and the lives of her fellow residents in Anita Brookner' s Hotel du Lac (1984).

In The Ring and the Book (1868-1869), Robert Browning's tale in blank verse based on a 1698 Roman murder trial, a beautiful young woman's attempt to escape an unhappy marriage ends in tragedy.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850) is a classic moral study of adultery and revenge set in Puritan New England.

The Age of Innocence (1920) is Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of frustrated passion set in 19th-century New York high society.

Edith Wharton Abroad. Selected Travel Writings, 1888-1920 is a collection of Wharton's observations over a thirty-year period from her journeys through Europe, Morocco, and the Mediterranean, edited by Sara Bird Wright.