Dangerous Liaisons

Two of literature’s great predators, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, were once lovers and are now co-conspirators who treat seduction as sport and other people as pieces on a board. Told entirely through their letters and those of their victims, the novel follows Valmont’s campaign to ruin a virtuous married woman and corrupt a convent-raised girl, all while the Marquise keeps her own private score. Beneath the wit and the elegant French manners runs a cold study of vanity, revenge, and the cruelty that boredom can breed among the idle rich. First published in 1782, it scandalized pre-Revolutionary France and remains one of the sharpest novels ever written about desire and power. Free to download as a PDF or EPUB.