The complete online text of The Two Brothers by Honoré de Balzac.

Had Balzac been a less masterful novelist, the disreputably profligate fraud in him might have overwhelmed his artistry. Still, the other Balzac, the artist, is tainted by his well-earned reputation for what has been called artistic license or dishonesty...

The French novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was the first writer to use fiction to convey the total social scene prevailing within one country at a particular period in its history. Commonly regarded as the founder of social realism, he also...

A trail of pennies from a burning taxi cab led authorities to the home of a teenager, who is now charged with killing the cab driver, authorities said.Driver Jagit Singh had been the working the night shift for Farwest Taxi when a caller reported seeing...

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A glance at the three former Saddam Hussein officials sentenced to hang for a 1980s military crackdown against Kurds in northern Iraq, which killed more than 100,000 people.___ALI HASSAN AL-MAJID: A career military official who gained the notorious nickname "Chemical Ali" for ordering poison gas...

Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinian men who approached the border fence separating Gaza from Israel overnight, Palestinian medical staff said.The two brothers, in their forties, had walked close to an Israel-Gaza border terminal late on Friday night. Local residents said the men often scoured...