Sara Stanley is only fourteen, but she can weave tales that are impossible to resist. In the picturesque town of Carlisle, children and grown-ups alike flock from miles around to hear her spellbinding tales.When Bev and Felix, two city boys, are sent to Carlisle for the summer, they are captivated by this very different rural island and by Sara Stanley, the Story Girl. Their vacation becomes a time for magic and mischief as they spend their days with Sara and the eccentric local pe...

For vibrant, lovely Jean Suttman, the fellowship to study in Rome was the culmination of her dreams, until she undertook an innocent expedition to the ancient Temple of Mithra. From the moment she stepped into the pagan darkness and discovered the corpse of Albert, one of her fellow students, she was afraid.Not even the comforting presence of the perceptive and practical Jacqueline Kirby could erase the fear that was nourished by one small accident after another, “accidents” that c...

Scotland is Susan’s passion and obsession, and the opportunity to join a Highland dig is a dream come true for the young archaeology student. But then a sinister stranger slips Susan a cryptic message in ancient verse—and is later found viciously slain. A mysterious peril has unexpectedly emerged from the mists to haunt Susan, sending her running for her life in the company of handsome, unconventional laird Jamie Erskine. Caught up in international intrigue involving the trafficking of his...

This spare, mesmerizing novel is Edith Wharton’s money-can’t-buy-happiness tale. Young Stephen Glennard is poor, but he has an unanticipated gambling chip: a collection of love letters from a scorned but now famous lover, the distinguished novelist Margaret Aubyn. To raise money for his forthcoming wedding to another woman, Stephen stoops to selling the letters. His decision brings him wealth and admission to society, but a mystery contained in the missives comes back to haunt him, and it ...

When twenty-four-year-old Eric Marshall arrives on Prince Edward Island to become a substitute schoolmaster, he has a bright future in his wealthy family’s business. Eric has taken the two-month teaching post only as a favor to a friend—but fate throws in his path a beautiful, mysterious girl named Kilmeny Gordon. With jet black hair and sea blue eyes, Kilmeny immediately captures Eric’s heart. But Kilmeny cannot speak, and Eric is concerned for and bewitched by this shy, sensitive mute gi...

The five little Peppers are an adorable family of children growing up in a small town and cared for by their widowed mother. She is so poor that the pittance she earns as the town seamstress fails to support or even sustain the family.The children are happy despite privation, and the smallest pleasures cause delight and merriment in the little house. Everything happens to this brood while mother is away sewing, and no matter how dangerous the situation, they come out of it safe and...

A good salary and an all-expenses-paid summer spent a sprawling Arizona ranch is too good a deal for fledgling anthropologist D. J. Abbott to turn down—especially when it's six hundred miles from home. What does it matter that her rich new employer and benefactor, Hank Hunnicutt, is a certified oddball who is presently funding all manner of off-beat projects, from alien conspiracy studies to a hunt for dragon bones? There's even talk of treasure buried in the nearby mountains, but D. J. is...

Ellie and Henry are young, rich, in love, and engaged. In the carefree days before marriage and new responsibility, Ellie is happy to accept hereccentric Aunt Kate's request that shehouse-sit atKate's palatial estate in Burton, Virginia. With its nearly invisible housekeepers and plethora of pets, Ellie feels right at home. Conventional Henry, however, finds Aunt Kate and her lifestyle a little hard to take, and so he departs. After he leaves, Ellie realizes that there are disturbing secre...

First published in 1899, this revolutionary novel so disturbed critics and the public that it was banished for decades afterward. Now widely read and admired, The Awakening has been hailed as an early vision of woman's emancipation. Rooted in the romantic tradition of Melville and Dickinson, it is the story of twenty-eight-year-old Edna Pontellier, a surprisingly modern woman trapped in a dehumanizing marriage and in search of self-discovery. Turning away from convention and society toward...

Wharton's most erotic and lyrical novel, Summer explores a daring theme for 1917: a woman's awakening to her sexuality.Eighteen-year-old Charity Royall lives in the small town of North Dormer, ignorant of desire until the arrival of architect Lucius Harney. Independent yet kept from love until now by society's expectations, Charity finds herself wrapped up in a love affair with Harney.Like the succulent summer landscape in the Berkshires around the...

Digging up a buried past could lead to a premature death, for there is a dangerous secret that is centuries old—as old as the treasure of Nefertiti.Althea Tomlinson comes back to Egypt as just another tourist, showing the country to a spoiled seventeen-year-old.That's what she tells herself, anyway.The truth is more complex—and dangerous. Ten years ago, something that happened in this desert land brought about her father's ruin and subsequent death—and Althea intends to clear her d...

One of Edith Wharton’s most acclaimed works, The Custom of the Country is a blistering indictment of materialism, power, and misplaced values. Its heroine, Undine Spragg, is one of the most ruthless characters in all of literature, as selfishly unscrupulous as she is fiercely beautiful. When her family acquires a small fortune, they leave America’s heartland and head east. As Undine climbs the social ladder through a series of marriages and affairs, she shows little concern for wh...