The Queen of Spades.

At first I was lost reading this, until I started making connections in each chapter.  There are so many characters in each chapter!  I had a hard time keeping them in order at first.  And everyone wants to know this card trick and that's what the whole story is about, except it has 2 stories, the boy wanting the trick, but then the life of Lisaveta.
The language in this story is hard to understand, because it is written very properly and some french appeared.  I think the quotes at the beginning of each chapter is cool, if I only knew what they said.
The Countess is really annoying.  She is so demanding and very picky!  So the Grandmother from the card story in chapter 1 the same person as the Countess.  I just figured that out.   I love the character Lisaveta.  She has a sass to her, but she still does everything the Countess says.  Who was the boy who gave Lisaveta the letter to meet him?  Why did the Countess die?  I loved how the Countess tricked Herman, he was too greedy anyway.  And now he is a mental case.  I like the conclusion at the end, even though the whole story was pretty random.