The Bet is an 1889 short story by Anton Chekhov about a banker and a young lawyer who make a bet with each other about whether the death penalty is better or worse than life in prison. (Goodreads)
PergamonMedia, Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, M.I. Saltykov, Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko, Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Fyodor Sologub, Ignaty Nikolayevich Potapenko, ST Semyonov, Maxim Gorky, Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev, Mikhail Petrovich Artsybashev & Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin