Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain

This story is less of a noir-style thriller than the others in this collection. An ordinary housewife, Mildred Pierce, throws her husband out after she tires of his infidelities and starts a restaurant business in order to keep herself and maintain her daughter's pride. Quickly the reader comes to realize, however, that the daughter is two-faced, catty, and brings out the worst of Mildred (especially in her judgment of how to spend money). The HBO series follows the novel very closely, except it glosses over the way Mildred takes Monty back to get to Veda, which the novel makes explicitly clear.