Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
I want to read the book!
All characters reduced
The Anniversary - And Other Stories - cover

The Anniversary - And Other Stories

Louis Auchincloss

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

From a New York Times–bestselling author: A collection of short fiction “reminiscent of the work of Henry James and Edith Wharton” (Library Journal).   Crisscrossing a tumultuous century, these stories evoke lives both blessed and cursed by good fortune and reveal the quotidian conflicts of a wonderfully rich milieu. Here are vignettes that capture the loves and jealousies of marriage and friendship, recall days of a rarefied aristocracy, and hint at a new, ambitious young elite.   In the title story, a tour de force of humor and emotion, a clergyman prepares a toast for his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary but gets stuck when it comes to his wife’s five-year affair. The narrator in “DeCicco v. Schweizer” imagines the lives of the plaintiff and defendant and spins a wicked tale about a 1902 marriage born more of convenience than of love. And in “The Last of the Great Courtesans,” we meet the unforgettable Milly Marion, born in 1917, who has bewitched everyone she has met in her long, colorful life.   Whether these stories concern an anxious draft dodger, a repentant headmaster, or a mischievous writer who ill-advisedly draws from her own family for her fiction, they all offer soulful glimpses into an uncommon world, preserved in our past and yet surprisingly close to our hearts.   “His themes are universal—ambition, greed, disappointment, compromise. Some of the most memorable characters are women, trying to find their way in a time of more restricted choices . . . It’s easy to get lost in the author’s elegant and restrained prose.” —Booklist
Available since: 07/15/1999.
Print length: 192 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • The Inexperienced Ghost - cover

    The Inexperienced Ghost

    H. G. Wells

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific English writer, now best remembered for his science fiction novels and often credited as being the father of science fiction. "The Inexperienced Ghost" is a ghost story with a twist. Clayton, overnighting alone at the club, encounters a pathetic ghost who is struggling to remember how to get back to the spirit world. With Clayton's help, he finally works out the precise method for crossing out of our world into the next. But now that Clayton knows the secret of moving between the two worlds, will he be able to resist the temptation to try it out?
    Show book
  • Jatadhar Bakshi Samagra : MyStoryGenie Bengali Audiobook Boxset 4 - Exploits of the Facetious Conman - cover

    Jatadhar Bakshi Samagra :...

    Rajshekhar Basu

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Jatadharer Bakshi Samagra is a comic anthology (trilogy) based on a facetious cheat, penned by the legendary humorist - Rajshekhar Basu alias Parashuram, whom he constructed as one who used to get people under his spell with his gift of the gab. Spontaneity and imagination were such a natural disposition of this cheat that the gullible fell for his sleight repeatedly and almost happily and voluntarily till they realized it again.  
One of the leading lights among the Bengal intellectuals of that era, Rajshekhar Basu alias Parashuram, served us well with his characteristic humor-coated sarcasm that made fun of the irrationality and deep superstitions that were plaguing the society and its people. Yet his writings ring as foresight even in this age of information overflow. 
Discover many more such Bengali audio stories by typing mystorygenie in the search bar without leaving any space between the different English alphabets.
    Show book
  • The Curious Vehicle - cover

    The Curious Vehicle

    Alexander W. Drake

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Alexander W. Drake (1843-1916) was an American wood engraver and art collector and director of the art department for Scribner’s and Century magazine. His weird tales were collected by friends to memorialize him following his death in 1916.'The Curious Vehicle' (1893) is the story of a man who is intrigued by a strange carriage on the street and watches it curiously until one snowy Christmas Eve he is invited inside by the mysterious owner. The stranger tells him his sad love story and of his obsessive search to paint the perfect halo on an image of his lost love.
    Show book
  • The Missing Witness Sensation - cover

    The Missing Witness Sensation

    Ernest Bramah

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Ernest Bramah (1868-1942) was an English author of 21 novels and numerous short stories and features. His humorous works have been ranked with Jerome K. Jerome and W. W. Jacobs, his detective stories with Conan Doyle, his politico-science fiction with H. G. Wells, and his supernatural stories with Algernon Blackwood.In his stories of detection, Bramah hit on the idea of a blind detective, Max Carrados, whose triumphs are all the more amazing because of his disability.In The Missing Witness Sensation, Max Carrados finds himself an unusual witness in what on the surface appears to be an ordinary Post Office robbery. But before the case comes to court, Max Carrados has mysteriously disappeared. Even when the accused is found guilty, the missing witness does not return. The story behind the disappearance is far stranger than any normal detective case.
    Show book
  • Psalms of David - cover

    Psalms of David

    Isaac Watts

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Isaac Watts was a poet, hymn-writer and musician. He wrote many of what we regard as "classical hymns" such as "Joy to the World" and "When I survey the wondrous cross". His translations of the Psalms are therefore poetical and musical, as they were designed to be sung. He captures in elegant English the feel of the original Psalms as they would have been heard by the Israelites thousands of years ago. - Summary by Beth Thomas
    Show book
  • In the Walled City - Stories - cover

    In the Walled City - Stories

    Stewart O'Nan

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    An award-winning collection of short fiction from one of “the strongest American writers of his generation” (The Washington Post Book World).   Proclaimed “a master” by the New York Times and selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, Stewart O’Nan started his literary career with this outstanding collection of short stories. Selected as the winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, these twelve stories offer intimate portraits of a broad range of characters—including a ruined farmer, a black day laborer, an old Chinese grocer, and a young policeman who descends into madness after being separated from his family.   Probing and lyrical, these stories illuminate the connections that bind us and the obligations and sorrows of love. From The Speed Queen to The Names of the Dead to West of Sunset, O’Nan has dazzled readers again and again. Fans new and old will enjoy In the Walled City.   “These are stories of a high order, sophisticated, humane, persistent; once read, they don’t go away.” —Tobias Wolff
    Show book