Cousin Betty

Poor, plain, and quietly seething, the aging spinster Bette nurses a lifetime of resentment against the wealthy relatives who patronize her, and she sets out to destroy them from within. Allied with a beautiful, scheming young wife, she plays on the lusts and vanities of the Hulot family until fortunes collapse and reputations burn. One of the last and greatest novels in Balzac’s vast Human Comedy, it is a merciless anatomy of desire, money, and revenge in the Paris of Louis-Philippe. Few of his books move with such dark energy or expose the machinery of ruin so precisely. Free to download as a PDF or EPUB.