Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)

Stifled by her marriage of convenience to a man twice her age, the young Katerina Lvovna goes yawning about the house, missing the barefoot freedom of her childhood, until she meets the feckless steward Sergei Filipych. Sergei proceeds to seduce Katerina, as he has done half the women in the town, not realising that her passions, once awoken, will attach to him so fiercely that Katerina will stop at nothing to keep hold of him.