Showing results by author "Edith Wharton" in All Categories

It's midnight. Turn out the lights, cuddle with your true love, and shiver to fright-meisters Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, and H. P. Lovecraft. Quicken your pulse with the elegant terror of Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Guy de Maupassant. Chortle at the black glee of H. H. Munro and Ambrose Bierce.

Summer, set in New England, is a novel by Edith Wharton, published in 1917. The novel details the sexual awakening of its protagonist, 18-year-old, Charity Royall, and her cruel treatment by the father of her child. Only moderately well-received when originally published, Summer, has had a resurgence in critical popularity since the 1960s.

The House of Mirth is a novel of manners set against the backdrop of the 1890s New York ruling class. Wharton places her tragic heroine, Lily Bart, in a society that she describes as a ‘hot-house of traditions and conventions.'

Step beyond the lamplight and into the gilded darkness of a vanished world. Ghost Stories from the Gilded Age is a classic ghost story anthology featuring eerie tales by female authors who defied convention—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, and more. Narrated by an all-star ensemble of Audie, SOVAS, and One Voice award winners and nominees, this haunting audiobook collection blends Gothic elegance with supernatural unease.

The Cities Classics Collection: London, Paris, New York allows you to step into the vibrant streets of three of the world's most iconic cities through a carefully curated collection of literary masterpieces. From the foggy alleys of London to the grand boulevards of Paris, and the buzzing avenues of New York, these stories bring to life the essence of urban life, capturing the triumphs, tragedies, and timeless experiences of the people who shaped these cities.

In an era before the advent of electric lights, telephones or motor vehicles, there exists a small cluster of aristocratic "old revolutionary stock" families that rule New York's social life. Under the rules of this society, "being things" is better than "doing things" and reputation and outward appearances come at the exclusion of everything else. In this Gilded Age, when America’s expansion and increased industrialism produce a group of newly wealthy robber barons and financiers.

Odo Valsecca, a young and ambitious nobleman, inherits a dukedom at a tender age and must swiftly navigate the treacherous waters of royal politics. As he engages with rival nobles, the church, and the burgeoning free-thinking movement, Odo faces the daunting challenge of winning the hearts of his subjects—the peasants. Will he rise to power in time, or will the pressures of the Italian court in the seventeenth century prove too much for him? Published in 1902, The Valley of Decision marks Edith Whartons debut full-length novel, skillfully summarized by Mary Kay.

Probably the most famous of Edith Wharton's novels, Ethan Frome contrasts sharply with her usual ironic contemplation of the fashionable New York society to which she herself belonged and whose strengths and weaknesses she understood so well. Ethan Frome is a keenly-etched portrait of the simple inhabitants of a 19th-century New England village.

Summer details the sexual awakening of Charity Royall, who lives unhappily with her hard-drinking adoptive father in an isolated New England village. Lucius Harney, a visiting architect, awakens her sexual passion and her hope for escape. Exploring Charity's relation to her father and her lover, Edith Wharton delves into dark cultural territory: repressed sexuality, small-town prejudice, and, in subtle hints, incest.

This sixth volume of The Greatest Mysteries of All Time offers a variety of works by some of the most lauded writers in the field of suspense and literature.

A captivating collection of 60-minute classic stories by great writers.

The novel is about New York City society in its best years through the life of a beautiful girl who is an outside insider with a foot in and several feet outside the inner circle.

A creepy anthology of 25 of the most hauntingly scary ghost stories ever written. 1.Afterward by Edith Wharton 2. Bagnell Terrace by E. F. Benson 3.His Brother’s Keeper by W. W. Jacobs 4.A Coincidence by A. J. Alan 5.The Confession of Charles Linkworth by E. F. Benson 6.The Death Mask by H. D. Everett 7.The Room in the Tower by E. F. Benson 8.The Furnished Room by O. Henry 9.The Thing in the Hall by E. F. Benson 10.The Eyes by Edith Wharton 11. The Wind in the Portico by John Buchan.

"Ethan Frome" is one of Edith Wharton's best known works and has become a staple of American literature classes around the globe since it was first published in 1911. The story is a simple tale of desire, regret and forbidden love. The title character, Ethan, has resigned himself to living in a loveless, sterile marriage with his wife Zenobia. But when his wife's young cousin Mattie moves into the house and both she and Ethan are drawn together, it begins a romance that can only end in heartbreak... or tragedy.

This collection brings together stories by Edith Wharton, Katherine Mansfield, Wilkie Collins and Marcel Proust, with forays into the supernatural and the comedic by Sabine Baring-Gould and Saki. Be them funny or moving, all stories are beautifully read by Harriet Walter (Atonement, Netflix’s The Crown), Juliet Stevenson (Bend it Like Beckham, The Enfield Haunting), Barbara Leigh-Hunt (Pride and Prejudice, Billy Elliot) and Rosalind Ayres (Titanic, Outnumbered).

Winter in a Massachusetts village serves as a backdrop to Edith Wharton's masterpiece about a man with little hope of escaping his bleak future. Married to an older woman named Zeena, Ethan Frome finds himself drawn to his wife's cousin, Mattie.

Martin Boyne, a midlife bachelor seeking a quiet reunion with a lost love, finds his world upended when he encounters the seven Wheater children. Products of their wealthy parents' endless cycle of divorce and remarriage, the siblings are led by the fiercely protective fifteen-year-old Judith. Bound by a pact never to be separated, the children cling to one another as the only stable force in a world of fleeting whims and neglected duties.

The Custom of the Country (1913) is a scathing critique of American upward mobility, as told through the journey of overindulged Undine Spragg. She moves from Apex City to New York and then Paris in pursuit of two things - money and status. She will stop at nothing to achieve this goal, no matter how many affairs, lies, and divorces it takes.

NBC University Theater initially started in Chicago with a remit to bring adaptations of classic novels, usually Anglo-American, to a radio audience. In its later years, it also included short stories and plays and went on to win the distinguished Peabody award. University Theater relied on excellent distillations of the novels and first-class acting alongside high production values.

Although well-known for her novels of manners and social critique, such as The House of Mirth and the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton was also a master of the ghost story. Her ghostly characters appear in many different forms, haunting such places as a splendid English country estate, a lonely house on the coast of storm-tossed Brittany, and an isolated New England village.