Willa Cather
1) My Ántonia
4) O pioneers!
Alexandra...
Though best known as an expert chronicler of the American West, Willa Cather's first novel is an in-depth character study of world-renowned bridge designer Bartley Alexander, whose seemingly settled life is thrown into turmoil when he takes up with a former lover during a stay in London. This thought-provoking tale is sure to be a pleasant surprise for fans of Cather's later novels.
6) My Antonia
My Ántonia, first published 1918, is one of Willa Cather's greatest works. It is the last novel in the Prairie trilogy, preceded by O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark. My Ántonia tells the stories of several immigrant families who move out to rural Nebraska to start new lives in America, with a particular focus on a Bohemian family, the Shimerdas, whose eldest daughter is named Ántonia. The book's narrator,
...Virginia-born writer Willa Cather burst onto the American literary scene with this riveting collection of short stories, all loosely yoked together via the theme of the arts, artists, and creativity. Fans of Cather's later work will be surprised at the sophistication of these assured, mannered early pieces, which hint strongly of her admiration for the fiction of Henry James.
Though she later climbed to literary fame on the strength of her novels set in the American frontier such as O Pioneers! and My Antonia, much of Willa Cather's early fiction was set in the upper-crust enclaves of New York and New England. This collection of short stories deftly explores the inner workings of American high society in the early twentieth century, with a few forays into the vast Western plains that served as the backdrop
...New from Duke Classics—My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather. Dealing with choices, consequences, jealousy, and loss, Cather's novel is a dark exploration of idealism juxtaposed with the harsh reality of lost fortunes, lost happiness, and the meaning of morality.
In her final novel, Willa Cather departed from her usual Great Plains settings to plumb the turbulent relationships between slaves and their owners in the antebellum South.
Sapphira and the Slave Girl is set in Virginia just before the Civil War. Sapphira is a slave owner who feels she has come down in the world and channels her resentments into jealousy of her beautiful mulatto slave, Nancy. Sapphira’s daughter Rachel,
To the people of Sweet Water, a fading railroad town on the Western plains, Mrs. Forrester is the resident aristocrat, at once gracious and comfortably remote. To her aging husband she is a treasure whose value increases as his powers fail. To Niel Herbert, who falls in love with her as a boy and becomes her confidant...
At first glance, 'The Most Dangerous Game' by Richard Connell, 'Paul's Case' by Willa Cather, and 'The Beast in the Jungle' by Henry James have very little in common. In 'The Most Dangerous Game' Sanger Rainsford, an accomplished big game hunter, is marooned on a remote island that is inhabited by another big game hunter, General Zaroff, who has found a very twisted way to add thrills to his hunting parties. In 'Paul's Case' a young man from Pittsburgh
...