Événements se déroulant dans la ville de Berry. Les livres examinent la vulnérabilité des femmes de haut rang aux commérages et le concept selon lequel certaines femmes sont si inhabituelles que l’amour et le mariage traditionnels ne peuvent tout simplement pas s’intégrer à leur vie. André est un jeune noble éduqué, mais sans métier ni ambition, lorsqu’il tombe amoureux de la belle et sensible Geneviève, créatrice de fleurs artificielles. Sa vie change complètement après un...
À Paris, apparaît soudainement une belle inconnue, Paula Monty. Son nom excite et dérange les habitués de la vie sociale parisienne. Le voile du secret enveloppe sa vie dont le but est la vengeance de l’époux décédé. Cependant, l’enquête scrupuleuse, presque policière de la belle révèle l’inattendu...
George Sand – le pseudonyme de l’écrivain français Aurora Dupin-Dyudevan. Dans ses nombreuses œuvres, les idées de libération de la personnalité se combinent à une recréation psychologique de talent de personnages idéalement sublimes, de conflits d’amour complexes. Le roman „Consuelo” est une histoire fascinante de la vie d’un jeune chanteur qui doit surmonter des épreuves difficiles en donnant son art aux gens. Il s’agit d’un livre sur le destin d’un véritable artiste, sur...
„The Happy Average” is a novel of far more genuine merit than Mr. Whitlock’s former works. It is a realistic story of commonplace life in a small Ohio town, the realism being of that wholesome sort which portrays the every-day existence, the small joys and sorrows, of the average men and women of the average Western village. The story deals with the struggles of the hero, Glenn Marley, a young man of very ordinary ability, to win a place in the legal profession and at the s...
The Reverend John Smith is an ordinary cleric who learns during his vacation that he was promoted to canon at the residence of Frattenbury Cathedral. During his stay at the hotel he meets an Englishman who tells him that the clergy is too divorced from reality. This is an interesting mystery involving a clergyman who defends his faith and moral values in solving a crime.
Victor Whitechurch, a clergyman who became a mysterious writer, well known for his detective story Railroad Stories, was admired by Ellery Queen and Dorothy L. Sayers for „impeccable conspiracy and factual accuracy: he was one of the first authors to submit his manuscripts to Scotland Yard to check for a police procedure. Downland’s echoes analyze the life of a small village and the interaction of all the characters who live in it in everyday situations, from the funeral to...
Published in 1902, „The Valley of Decision” is Edith Wharton’s first full length novel set in late 18th century Italy. In it, Odo Valsecca, a young Italian raised by peasants, is plucked from poverty and dropped into the lap of luxury as the newly named heir to his cousin, a duke. It is the time leading up to the French revolution, and Europe swirls with conflicting factions and ideologies, some trying to prop up the feudal and religious traditions that empowered them, and ...
Great story about the Alaskan border. This is a heartbreaking story that shows the relationship of the main characters Sally, John and Blackie. A story about a young man and his bride and their journey to Alaska by sea, as well as about many bright men and women whom they met along the way. This is a wonderful fun adventure reading.
There is a secret surrounding the abandoned local manuar and the death of the local miller. When a lawyer on vacation is found slaughtered, the law enters into force. One area of interest for the British reader is the different legal system and methodology used by Sergeant Biguri, who is conducting an official investigation. His personality perfectly complements and contrasts with the personality of Tredgold. The love interest between Dr. Wood and Adrienne de Saint-Remy i...
„Judgement at Chelmsford” is a pageant play, written for a church setting. The author Charles Williams (1886-1945), who was a British theologian, playwright, novelist and poet, was commissioned to produce this play to mark the 25th anniversary of The Diocese of Chelmsford in 1939. In it, he created a huge, sprawling drama about the history of Chelmsford. Eight episodes, a prologue and epilogue, make this a formidable work. It was intended to be a large-scale pageant play an...
Philip Clavering is a British agent using fake name James Dunlop while in Belgium. He found out that the train Berlin-Paris crashed. His boss calls and tells him that agent Charles Forrest was on this train, and Philip must find the gold box he was carrying. The woman who survived the crash is in his hotel, and he asks her if she has any information about Forrest. She is in a state of panic and loses consciousness. Returning to the lobby, he meets with Dr. Grundt, who rides...
When in 1925 his first novel „The Son of His Father” was published at the Chicago publishing house, then its circulation took twenty-seven freight cars. The „Son of His Father” was made near the Oracle, and his first show was in Tucson. A great adventure in the desert and mountain world of Arizona and the Mexican border. Adventure lovers will amuse by this novel.
Is Lily Bart a victim of circumstance or an agent of her own destruction? Edith Wharton’s acutely observed novel poses this question as it follows Lily’s tragic path through the country houses, card tables and drawing rooms of New York’s beau monde at the turn of the 20th century. Impoverished but well-born, Lily realizes a secure future depends on her acquiring a wealthy husband. Her desire for a comfortable life means that she will not marry for love without money, but he...
This is Wharton’s fifth novel. It is considered, together with the previous „Ethan Frome „and the subsequent „The Custom of the Country”, as partly autobiographical. Young diplomat George Darrow is on his way to meet Anna Leath, an old girlfriend who is now a widow with a young daughter and a grown stepson. When Anna abruptly postpones their rendezvous without explanation, Darrow concludes that she is no longer interested in him. He has a brief liaison with the delicate, ge...
American writer Edith Wharton is known for her novels of manners set in old New York; yet much of her adult life was spent in France. She lived in Paris throughout World War I and was heavily involved in refugee work. She was a hugely successful writer and the first woman ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for her novel „The Age of Innocence”. In this 1918 novella, we are introduced to the story of 15-year-old Troy Belknap who is from a wealthy family in New York but yearns to ...
Glennard had never thought himself a hero; but he had been certain that he was incapable of baseness. The central character, Stephen Glennard, sells for publication the private letters of a former, deceased lover, who had become a famous writer, so that he can finance his marriage to the girl he loves. The letters are a success, and he is able to be married. But when the guilt becomes unbearable and he confesses his transgression to his new wife, will she be able to forgive...
Set in the 1920s, „Glimpses of the Moon” details the romantic misadventures of Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, a couple with the right connections but not much in the way of funds. They are in love and decide to marry, but realize their chances of happiness are slim without the wealth and society that their more privileged friends take for granted. Nick and Susy agree to separate when either encounters a more eligible proposition. Their conditional marriage begins to falter a...
This is Edith Wharton’s earliest published collection of 8 short stories (1899). A selection consists: „Muse’s Tragedy”: Unrequited love between a poet and his muse. „The Journey”: A woman journeys with her ailing husband. „The Pelican”: A woman supports her son. „Souls Belated”: The pressure put on couples to marry. „A Coward”: A man recounts his cowardice past. „The Twilight of the God”: Past lovers meet under a husbands eye. „A Cup of Cold Water”: Redemption song. „The P...
Published in 1907, this little novel by the author of „The Age of Innocence” was considered controversial for its frank treatment of labor and industrial conditions, drug addiction, mercy killing, divorce, and second marriages. Clever, idealistic and poor John Amherst, the assistant manager of the cotton mill, is fed up with the deplorable working and living conditions of the workers in his charge. While visiting a worker in hospital he encounters a young nurse, Justine, co...
„The Descent of Man and Other Stories” is the third collection of ten short fiction from Edith Wharton, first published in 1904. It includes the title piece „Descent of Man,” as well as „The Other Two,” „Expiation,” „The Lady’s Maid’s Bell,” „The Mission of Jane,” „The Reckoning,” „The Letter,” „The Dilettante,” „The Quicksand,” and „A Venetian Night’s Entertainment”. Wharton dissecting some of the customs, habits and vagaries of courtship and marriage, particularly as prac...
Kate Orme is a young woman whose illusions of marital bliss are shattered when she comes face to face with the dark secret harbored by her fiancé, the wealthy and deceptively ebullient Denis. Kate decides to go ahead and by society’s willingness to overlook such transgressions, nevertheless marries him. Years later, her son faces a moral crisis similar to the one that showed her his father’s moral weakness. With the precision, beauty, and sharp awareness of the cracks in up...
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 ...
