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Kristen Underwood

Kristen Underwood

  • The Reef follows the fancies of George Darrow, a young diplomat en route from London to France, intent on proposing to the widowed Anna Leath. Unsettled by Anna's reticence, Darrow drifts into an affair with Sophy Viner, a charmingly na├»ve and impecunious young woman whose relations with Darrow and Anna's family threaten his prospects for success. The affair becomes the reef on which four lives are in danger of foundering: two of them innocent, and two of them burdened with experience and tinged with desperation.

    A challenge to the moral climate of the day, this story of the drastic effects of a casual sexual betrayal offers a clear-eyed assessment of the possibilities and limitations of human love.

  • The dolls in these stories act and talk just like real people—that is, when their mistress, young Marcella, or other adults are not there to see them.

    Raggedy Ann has charmed millions with her warm and optimistic outlook and unflappable approach to difficulties, while Raggedy Andy has pleased these fans with his adventurous spirit and compassionate nature. As Gruelle’s granddaughter said, “These stories contain nothing to cause fright, glorify mischief, excuse malice, or condone cruelty.” All the original twenty-three stories from Johnny Gruelle’s two books are included here, and all are guaranteed to delight and inspire.

  • Willa Cather’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel tells of the making of a young American soldier.

    Claude Wheeler, the sensitive, aspiring protagonist, resembles the youngest son of a peculiarly American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his crass father and pious mother, all but rejected by a wife who reserves her ardor for missionary work, and dissatisfied with farming, Claude is an idealist without an ideal to cling to. It is only when his country enters the First World War that Claude finds the purpose he has been searching for all his life. His yearnings impel him toward a frontier wilder and more violent than the one tamed by his pioneer ancestors.

    One of Ours is a canny and vital portrait of an American psyche at once skeptical and romantic, restless and heroic.

  • Out of funds and longing for a sea voyage, young doctor Ralph Leslie jumps at the chance to sign aboard a luxurious millionaire’s yacht as steward of the After House. His job is easy sailing until one summer night, when the dream voyage suddenly becomes a nightmare of blood and terror. One of the ship’s officers is thrown overboard; another one is killed with an axe. As panic sets in on the boat, only the young doctor remains calm enough to try to solve the murders. But can he stay alive long enough to do it?

    Here is another classic from the Mary Roberts Rinehart, a master of mystery and suspense novels known for their humor and ingenuity.

  • Hailed by Henry James as "the finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth in the country," Nathaniel Hawthorne'sThe Scarlet Letterreaches to our nation's historical and moral roots for the material of great tragedy. Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact of a single passionate act on the lives of three people: the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; the obsessed, vengeful Chillingworth; and the defiant Hester Prynne, who, unwilling to name her partner in adultery, is condemned to wear a scarlet "A" on the breast of her gown for the remainder of her life. She and her illegitimate daughter become outcasts, forced to live solitary lives—until Hester's estranged husband arrives and stirs up trouble.

    WithThe Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne became the first American novelist to forge from our Puritan heritage a universal classic—a masterful exploration of humanity's unending struggle with sin, guilt, and pride.