In 1921, Edith Wharton became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, earning the award for „The Age of Innocence”. But Wharton also wrote several other novels, as well as poems and short stories that made her not only famous but popular among her contemporaries. „Tales of Men and Ghosts” (1910) consists of ten masterful ghost stories that listed here in chronological order of their original publication dates: „The Bolted Door”, „His Father’s Son”, „The Daunt Diana”, „The ...
Edith Wharton’s 1913 novel is a devastating critique of American upward mobility, told through the journey of Undine Spragg from fictional Midwestern Apex City to New York to Paris. Undine Spragg is one of the most ruthless characters in all of literature, as selfishly unscrupulous as she is fiercely beautiful. As Undine climbs the social ladder through a series of marriages and affairs, she shows little concern for who she has to step on to get anything and everything she ...
Another thrilling mystery by author Carolyn Wells. Instead of prison time, former governor, Samuel Appleby, sentences his former rival, Daniel Wheeler to imprisonment on his homestead with a very strange addendum. He then endeavors to convince Mr. Wheeler to endorse his son’s candidacy for governor with a promise of commuting his sentence. In the meantime, Samuel Appleby is murdered in Wheeler’s study, with a bullet through his heart. With not enough clues to proceed in the...
Considered by some to be her finest work, Edith Wharton’s „Summer” created a sensation when first published in 1917, as it was one of the first novels to deal honestly with a young woman’s sexual awakening. Seventeen-year-old Charity Royall is desperate to escape life with her hard-drinking adoptive father. Their isolated village stifles her, and his behavior increasingly disturbs her. When a young city architect Lucius Harney visits for the summer, it offers Charity the ch...
Even a short novel like „Madame de Treymes” shows you what a masterful writer Edith Wharton was. It is a captivating portrait of turn-of-the-century American and French culture. Inspired by Wharton’s own entré into Parisian society in 1906 and reminiscent of the works of Henry James, it tells the story of two young innocents abroad: Fanny Frisbee of New York, unhappily married to the dissolute Marquis de Malrive, and John Durham, her childhood friend who arrives in Paris in...
One of Edith Wharton’s most famous novels – the first by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize – exquisitely details a tragic struggle between love and responsibility during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people „dreaded scandal more than disease”. Newland Archer, a restrained young attorney, is engaged to the lovely May Welland but falls in love with May’s beautiful and unconventional cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska who returns to New York after a...
Carolyn Wells inspires and entertains with her classical mystery masterpiece, „The Vanishing of Betty Varian”, guaranteed to feed the mystery monster that craves suspense! The book was first published in 1922. In this classic locked room mystery, the Varian family have rented a house for the summer – a house built on the edge of a cliff, three sides faced by water and the entrance the only way in. They are about to go on a picnic with family and friends when the daughter re...
It had seemed an idyllic way for a group of wealthy New Yorkers to spend a summer month, researching the supernatural in a reputed haunted mansion in the depths of Vermont’s Green Mountains. That is until two of their number are mysteriously struck down at afternoon tea. Could the supernatural be at the heart of these deaths? Or did humans do the deed. This is the riddle that the famed detective Pennington Wise must unravel as they tries to discover what happened in... The ...
Originally published in 1916, but actually written in 1890, „Bunner Sisters” is a compelling, heartbreaking little novella about two sisters, who have never been apart, struggling to eek an existence as small shopkeepers on the margins of late nineteenth-century society in New York. They barely make enough money to live on. But when Ann Eliza the elder buys Evelina the younger a clock that does not work for her birthday, the sisters commence a relationship with Herbert Ramy...
Fleming Stone №23. On the eve of her marriage to Rodney Sayre, Emily Duane disappears. She had left her Hillside Park home to visit the hospital but never arrived there. Foul play is feared when Jim Pennington reports his wife Pauline, Emily’s best friend, also missing. Pennington says he left his wife at the ravine a short distance from Emily’s home. When he returned she had vanished. Polly’s body is found in the ravine, but where’s Emily? A wonderful mystery abound with t...
Carolyn Wells (June 18, 1862 – March 26, 1942) was an American author and poet. Wells wrote a total of more than 170 books. She was a well known author of children’s stories, until she began reading mystery stories written by Anna Katherine Green, and from then on she devoted her writings to puzzling mysteries in a similar vein. A new book by this popular author, and written in her best and most interest-compelling style. Ladybird Lovell, the staying guest, is a quaint and ...
In the early years of the 20th century, life on a farm in Massachusetts is not easy. The New England winters are hard; snow and ice cover the fields for months, and the nights are long and cold. For a poor farmer like Ethan Frome, life has few bright moments. He works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena’s young and beautiful cousin Mattie Silver enters their househo...
Originally published in 1901, „Crucial Instances” is the second collection of six short stories connected, as the title suggests, by a hinging moment in the narrative through which the plot alters dramatically. The contents included the following: „The Duchess at Prayer”, „The Angel at the Grave”, „The Recovery”, „Copy: A Dialogue”, „The Rembrandt”, „The Moving Finger” and „The Confessional”.This is a great collection of stories, where Edith Wharton shows her wide range of ...
Patty enters a contest and wins an electric car, which she names „The Swift Camilla”. Then she and her family decide to buy a summer home on the beach. All of Patty’s friends come up for a visit. Patty turns 19 in this book. She’s still not socially considered an adult, but her relationships are starting to get slightly more complicated. First appearance of Mona Galbraith. „Patty’s Motor Car” is the ninth novel in the series of Patty Fairfield for young readers by the famou...
From that famous foundry of fiction, fact and frivolity, author Carolyn Wells, comes another Fleming Stone detective story. When a popular playwright is found stabbed with his own pen made from a medieval dagger, suspicion fall on Mrs. Guy Thorndike, wife of a prominent actor. Fleming Stone finally turns up to solve the case. In the room, unheeded by police and sleuths, is a clue upon which Fleming Stone constructs a daring solution. The yarn is skillfully woven and splendi...
The steamship Pinnacle leaves New York on its way to Liverpool. Suspicions are raised and cast when a first class passenger, a shrewd oil man, is murdered, his head battered in by blows of the sinister bronze hand, modeled from Rodin’s original, which the victim had prized as his mascot. The apparent motive is theft of jewelry for his new wife, whom no one can track down, not even knowing if the marriage has happened yet. But, who killed Oily Cox? What part did the bronze h...
On the eve of her wedding day, Madeleine Van Norman, a beautiful young lady who is soon to come into her family fortune is found dead, apparently stabbed with an ominous blood-stained letter opener found nearby. Who killed her – the cousin who loved her but had been rejected; her fiancé, who was in love with another woman; her secretary, who loved the fiancé; the eccentric spinster who stood to inherit her property? „The Clue”, published in 1909, is the first book in the De...
A humorous account of a trip to London and brief sojourn in that city and its vicinity. It includes: „A Ticket to Europe”, „Crossing the Atlantic”, „In England–Now! „, „Mayfair in the Fair Month of May”, „A Hostess at Home”, „The Light on Burns’s Brow”, „Certain Social Uncertainties”, „A Sentimental Journey”, „All in a Garden Fair”, „I Went and Ranged about to Many Churches”, „Piccadilly Circus and its Environs”, „The Game of Going On”, „A French Week-End”. Carolyn Wells (1...
If you like Agatha Christie, or Henry James, or simply search for an author whose writing and characters you’ll enjoy, look no farther than Wells’ Fleming Stone Mysteries. In this one, wealthy but ornery heiress Lucy Carrington is found dead in her home following a spat with her niece, one of the two heirs to her fortune. With police baffled, master criminologist Fleming Stone is called in. But in a romantic twist, the great detective loses his heart to the primary suspect....
In this edge-of-your-seat thriller, renowned mystery writer Carolyn Wells strays from the enclaves of the well-to-do that usually serve as the settings for her novels and introduces elements of gritty street life. When the body of Rowland Trowbridge, a successful businessman, is found in a remote corner of Van Cortlandt Park, it initially appeared to be a robbery gone wrong. The dead man’s last words were „Cain killed me”, which leads investigators to the victim’s nephew Ka...
A collection of short sketches by the prolific American author which was first published in 1913. Carolyn Wells was an early 20th century poet and author best known for mysteries like „The Gold Bag” and „Fleming Stone Detective Stories”. During the first ten years of her career, she concentrated on poetry, humor, and children’s books. After 1910, she devoted herself to the mystery genre. The book contains: „At the lost-and-found desk”, „Tootie at the bank”, „The dressmaker ...
Patty and her dad decide to spend part of the year in New York City. She moves to New York and enrolls in the Oliphant School. Then she starts to make friends, as she always does, and she even starts a club called the Grig. First appearance of the Farringtons. „Patty in the City „ (1905) is the third book of the Patty Fairfield collection, a total of 17 novels covering the life of this happy and cheerful American teenager of a century ago, as she matures and comes of age, a...
Carolyn Wells (1862-1942) was an American author and poet. She wrote more than 170 books. During the first ten years of her career, she concentrated on poetry, humor, and children’s books. After 1910, she devoted herself to the mystery genre. This is one of the later books in the popular Patty Fairfield series of novels for young readers. In this volume, Patty and her chums hole up at a lavish hotel for a weeks-long reunion party. Then the story takes a dramatic turn when a...
„Dick and Dolly” was published in 1909 and told in a manner which makes the story really true to young readers. It is the story of nine-year old orphan twins (brother and sister) who have to move from one aunt’s home to live with some other aunt in Connecticut. This transfer of their dwelling-place didn’t bother Dick and Dolly much, for they were philosophical little people and took things just as they happened, and, moreover, they were so fond of each other, that so long a...
