Alexander Pushkin 
Queen of Spades 

The classic short story of gambling and obsessive greed by the celebrated Russian author and poet. An engineer with the Imperial Russian Army, Hermann never gambles with the other officers. But then he overhears the story of a countess who won a fortune using the secret of three magic cards. Obsessed with learning the secret, Hermann locates the elderly woman and poses as a suitor to her young ward. But when his deceitful plan takes a tragic turn, the consequences will haunt him to the point of madness. Alexander Pushkin wrote “The Queen of Spades” in 1833. One of the most famous short stories in Russian literature, it was the inspiration for Tchaikovsky’s opera of the same name.