Anna Karenina

Considered "the greatest novel of all time," Tolstoy's Anna Karenina was published in serial form between the years 1873 and 1877. It opens with the famous line "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." 

The novel is about love and adultery, and it portrays the tangled love lives of myriad characters: Oblonsky, who has cheated on his wife with the governess, is about to lose his family until sister Anna shows up to cool things out. But on the train ride she meets the dashing Count Vronsky, who is already engaged. Anna, married for ten years, falls in love with Vronsky and then... well everything blows up in her face. Mini plot descriptions, however, do little justice to the masterpiece that is Anna Karenina.