Includes index.

"The two drovers" / Sir Walter Scott -- from Bleak house / Charles Dickens -- from Adam Bede / George Eliot -- from Roughing it / Mark Twain -- from Lady Anna / Anthony Trollope -- from Billy Budd / Herman Melville -- from Weir of Hermiston / Robert Louis Stevenson -- "The cop and the anthem" / O. Henry -- from The Forsyte saga / John Galsworthy -- "A jury of her peers" / Susan Glaspell -- "The witness for the prosecution" / Agatha Christie -- "The letter" / W. Somerset Maugham -- "The majesty of the law" / Frank O'Connor -- "Shooting an elephant" / George Orwell -- "Tomorrow" / William Faulkner --"And, or" / Sterling A. Brown -- "Happy event" / Nadine Gordimer -- "Greenhouse with Cyclamens I" / Rebecca West -- from The floating opera / John Barth -- "Eli, the fanatic" / Philip Roth -- from To kill a mockingbird / Harper Lee -- "Mr. Portway's practice" / Michael Gilbert -- "The senior partner's ghosts" / Louis Auchincloss -- from The naked civil servant / Quentin Crisp -- from The French lieutenant's woman / John Fowles -- "An act of prostitution" / James Alan McPherson -- "A gentleman's agreement" / Elizabeth Jolley -- from The sorcerer of Bolinas Reef / Charles A. Reich -- from The good mother / Sue Miller -- from The bonfire of the vanities / Tom Wolfe -- from American appetites / Joyce Carol Oates -- from A lesson before dying / Ernest J. Gaines.