Ernest Poole (1880 - 1950) was born in Chicago, Illinois on 23 Jan 1880, and graduated from Princeton University in 1902. He was a correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post in Europe before and during World War I. He died in Franconia, NH on 10 Jan 1950. "His Family" has remained the work...  more

Ernest Poole (1880 - 1950) was born in Chicago, Illinois on 23 Jan 1880, and graduated from Princeton University in 1902. He was a correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post in Europe before and during World War I. He died in Franconia, NH on 10 Jan 1950. "His Family" has remained the work for which he is most well-known. This story of a middle class family in 1910 New York City is considered one of the first fictional works to offer a positive view of unions. His Family, published in 1917, made him the first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1918.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published in 1918, The Magnificent Ambersons chronicles the changing fortunes of three generations of an American dynasty. The protagonist of Booth Tarkington's great historical drama is George Amberson Minafer, the spoiled and arrogant grandson of...  more

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published in 1918, The Magnificent Ambersons chronicles the changing fortunes of three generations of an American dynasty. The protagonist of Booth Tarkington's great historical drama is George Amberson Minafer, the spoiled and arrogant grandson of the founder of the family's magnificence. Eclipsed by a new breed of developers, financiers, and manufacturers, this pampered scion begins his gradual descent from the midwestern aristocracy to the working class. Today The Magnificent Ambersons is best known through the 1942 Orson Welles movie, but as the critic Stanley Kauffmann noted, "It is high time that [the novel] appear again, to stand outside the force of Welles's genius, confident in its own right.""The Magnificent Ambersons is perhaps Tarkington's best novel," judged Van Wyck Brooks. "[It is] a typical story of an American family and town--the great family that locally ruled the roost and vanished virtually in a day as the town spread and darkened into a city. This novel no doubt was a permanent page in the social history of the United States, so admirably conceived and written was the tale of the Ambersons, their house, their fate and the growth of the community in which they were submerged in the end."

Set in turn-of-the-century New York, Edith Wharton's classic novel The Age of Innocence reveals a society governed by the dictates of taste and form, manners and morals, and intricate social ceremonies. With amazing clarity and sensitivity, Edith Wharton re-creates an atmosphere in which subtle...  more

Set in turn-of-the-century New York, Edith Wharton's classic novel The Age of Innocence reveals a society governed by the dictates of taste and form, manners and morals, and intricate social ceremonies. With amazing clarity and sensitivity, Edith Wharton re-creates an atmosphere in which subtle gestures and faint implications bespeak desire and emotion, in which beauty and innocence are valued above truth, and in which disturbing the social order disturbs the very foundations of one's identity. Newland Archer, soon to marry the lovely May Welland, is a man torn between his respect for tradition and family and his attraction to May's strongly independent cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska. Plagued by the desire to live in a world where two people can love each other free from condemnation and judgment by the group, Newland views the artful delicacy of the world he lives in as a comforting security one moment, and at another, as an oppressive fiction masking true human nature. The Age of Innocence is at once a richly drawn portrait of the elegant lifestyles, luxurious brownstones, and fascinating culture of bygone New York society and a compelling look at the conflict between human passions and the social tribe that tries to control them.

Alice Adams, the daughter of middle-class parents, wants desperately to belong with the people of "high society" who live in her town. Ultimately, her ambitions are tempered by the realities of her situation, which she learns to accept with grace and style. Alice\'s resiliency of spirit makes...  more

Alice Adams, the daughter of middle-class parents, wants desperately to belong with the people of "high society" who live in her town. Ultimately, her ambitions are tempered by the realities of her situation, which she learns to accept with grace and style. Alice\'s resiliency of spirit makes her one of Booth Tarkington\'s most compelling characters. A fascinating story that won the Pulitzer Prize. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

Willa Cather's Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative of the making of a young American soldierClaude Wheeler, the sensitive, aspiring protagonist of this beautifully modulated novel, resembles the youngest son of a peculiarly American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to...  more

Willa Cather's Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative of the making of a young American soldierClaude Wheeler, the sensitive, aspiring protagonist of this beautifully modulated novel, 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 what he has been searching for all his life.In One of Ours Willa Cather explores the destiny of a grandchild of the pioneers, a young Nebraskan whose yearnings impel him toward a frontier bloodier and more distant than the one that vanished before his birth. In doing so, she creates a canny and extraordinarily vital portrait of an American psyche at once skeptical and romantic, restless and heroic.

The Able McLaughlins, Scotch Covenanters, devoted to one another, deeply pious, but humor-loving and full of the emotion and sentiment which exists under the craggy Scotch exterior, are leaders in a pioneer Iowa community, Isobel McLaughlin, mother of ten, and Wully, the oldest son, are...  more

The Able McLaughlins, Scotch Covenanters, devoted to one another, deeply pious, but humor-loving and full of the emotion and sentiment which exists under the craggy Scotch exterior, are leaders in a pioneer Iowa community, Isobel McLaughlin, mother of ten, and Wully, the oldest son, are characters in whom one feels the spirit and intelligence and dauntless courage that carved out our Western States. The story is Wully's -- his wooing, his bride, his home building and the fine triumphant victory to which the end of the book brings him.

Winner of the 1924 Pulitzer Prize, So Big is widely regarded as Edna Ferber's crowning achievement. A rollicking panorama of Chicago's high and low life, this stunning novel follows the travails of gambler's daughter Selina Peake DeJong as she struggles to maintain her dignity, her family, and...  more

Winner of the 1924 Pulitzer Prize, So Big is widely regarded as Edna Ferber's crowning achievement. A rollicking panorama of Chicago's high and low life, this stunning novel follows the travails of gambler's daughter Selina Peake DeJong as she struggles to maintain her dignity, her family, and her sanity in the face of monumental challenges.

Early Autumn is the tale of the struggle between life and death in a New England family, old and decayed, but of a high name and tradition once distinguished in the history of America. Its chief character is Olivia Pentland, beautiful, an "outsider" from Chicago who married into the...  more

Early Autumn is the tale of the struggle between life and death in a New England family, old and decayed, but of a high name and tradition once distinguished in the history of America. Its chief character is Olivia Pentland, beautiful, an "outsider" from Chicago who married into the family, battling to save herself from the attraction of a fascinating politician of the new school and to save her daughter from the blight that touches everything in the Pentland family. Won 1927 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

This beautiful new edition features unpublished notes for the novel and other illuminating documentary material, all of which is included in a new Afterword by Tappan Wilder. "On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the...  more

This beautiful new edition features unpublished notes for the novel and other illuminating documentary material, all of which is included in a new Afterword by Tappan Wilder. "On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." With this celebrated sentence Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world. By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper then embarks on a quest to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths of those who perished in the tragedy. His search leads to his own death -- and to the author's timeless investigation into the nature of love and the meaning of the human condition. This new edition of Wilder’s 1928 Pulitzer Prize winning novel contains a new foreword by Russell Banks.

Rejecting the prevailing sentimental stereotypes of her times, Julia Peterkin (1880-1961) portrayed her black characters with sympathy and understanding, endowing them with the full dimensions of human consciousness. In a series of stories and novels, she tapped the richness of rural southern...  more

Rejecting the prevailing sentimental stereotypes of her times, Julia Peterkin (1880-1961) portrayed her black characters with sympathy and understanding, endowing them with the full dimensions of human consciousness. In a series of stories and novels, she tapped the richness of rural southern black culture .

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel captures the essence of the Southwest in the early 1900s-and depicts a young Native American couple experiencing all the uncertainties and joys of first love. Laughing Boy is one of the most powerful novels in American fiction. "Lucid beauty, vital artistic...  more

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel captures the essence of the Southwest in the early 1900s-and depicts a young Native American couple experiencing all the uncertainties and joys of first love. Laughing Boy is one of the most powerful novels in American fiction. "Lucid beauty, vital artistic imagination, and a clear, almost hypnotic style."-New York Times "Daring...triumphantly successful!"-Owen Wister, author of The Virginian

Pearl S. Buck's epic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of a China that was -- now in a Contemporary Classics edition. Though more than sixty years have passed since this remarkable novel won the Pulitzer Prize, it has retained its popularity and become one of the great modern classics. "I...  more

Pearl S. Buck's epic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of a China that was -- now in a Contemporary Classics edition. Though more than sixty years have passed since this remarkable novel won the Pulitzer Prize, it has retained its popularity and become one of the great modern classics. "I can only write what I know, and I know nothing but China, having always lived there," wrote Pearl Buck. In The Good Earth she presents a graphic view of a China when the last emperor reigned and the vast political and social upheavals of the twentieth century were but distant rumblings for the ordinary people. This moving, classic story of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-lan is must reading for those who would fully appreciate the sweeping changes that have occurred in the lives of the Chinese people during this century. Nobel Prize winner Pearl S. Buck traces the whole cycle of life: its terrors, its passions, its ambitions and rewards. Her brilliant novel -- beloved by millions of readers -- is a universal tale of the destiny of man.

The hero of this remarkably vivid novel is Colonel Miltiades Vaiden, a Southern gentlement of the old school, a veteran of the bloody battle of Shiloh and a leader of the Ku Klux Klan during the turbulent Reconstruction years following the Civil War. But The Store is much more than this one...  more

The hero of this remarkably vivid novel is Colonel Miltiades Vaiden, a Southern gentlement of the old school, a veteran of the bloody battle of Shiloh and a leader of the Ku Klux Klan during the turbulent Reconstruction years following the Civil War. But The Store is much more than this one man's story: it is a masterful novel of the people who survived the death of the old South and witnessed the birth of the new. Among the many unforgettable characters that T.S. Stribling has created are Drusilla Crowninshield, who twice jilted the Colonel, and Sydna, her daughter, who loved him but feared for their happiness because of the great difference in their ages; J. Handback, the cheat of a storekeeper who robbed the Vaidens of their money and position; and Toussaint, the Colonel's bastard son, an octoroon who died at the hands of a frenzied lynch mob.

In 1934, Caroline Miller's novel Lamb in His Bosom won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. It was the first novel by a Georgia author to win a Pulitzer, soon followed by Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind in 1937. In fact, Lamb was largely responsible for the discovery of Gone With the Wind;...  more

In 1934, Caroline Miller's novel Lamb in His Bosom won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. It was the first novel by a Georgia author to win a Pulitzer, soon followed by Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind in 1937. In fact, Lamb was largely responsible for the discovery of Gone With the Wind; after reading Miller's novel, Macmillan editor Harold S. Latham sought other southern novels and authors, and found Margaret Mitchell. Caroline Miller was fascinated by the other Old South not the romantic inhabitants of Gone With the Wind, but rather the poor people of the south Georgia backwoods, who never owned a slave or planned to fight a war. The story of Cean and Lonzo, a young couple who begin their married lives two decades before the Civil War, Lamb in His Bosom is a fascinating account of social customs and material realities among settlers of the Georgia frontier. At the same time, Lamb in His Bosom transcends regional history as Miller's quietly lyrical prose style pays poignant tribute to a woman's life lived close to nature the nature outside her and the nature within.

Poetic, evocative, and savage, this Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel (1934) depicts a white, middle-class urban family that is turned into dirt-poor farmers by the Depression and the great drought of the 1930s. The novel moves through the seasons of a single year — and at the same time, a...  more

Poetic, evocative, and savage, this Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel (1934) depicts a white, middle-class urban family that is turned into dirt-poor farmers by the Depression and the great drought of the 1930s. The novel moves through the seasons of a single year — and at the same time, a decade of years — from the spring arrival of the family to winter ten years later, when they have faced the ravages of drought, fire, and personal anguish. Like Ethan Frome, the story evokes the torment possible among people isolated and driven by powerful — but unexpressed — feelings of love and hate. The New Republic wrote of this first novel, “here is talent full-blown at twenty-four, fragile and, in its way, nearly perfect," and Commonweal called it "a stark and beautiful idyll, pregnant with tragedy.”

The virtues of the frontier live again in the lives and characters of Oregon settlers during the homesteading period from 1906-1908.  Davis received the Harper's Prize for fiction the year it was published (1935) and the Pulitzer Prize in 1936. 

Margaret Mitchell's epic novel of love and war won the Pulitzer Prize and went on to give rise to two authorized sequels and one of the most popular and celebrated movies of all time. Many novels have been written about the Civil War and its aftermath. None take us into the burning fields and...  more

Margaret Mitchell's epic novel of love and war won the Pulitzer Prize and went on to give rise to two authorized sequels and one of the most popular and celebrated movies of all time. Many novels have been written about the Civil War and its aftermath. None take us into the burning fields and cities of the American South as Gone With the Wind does, creating haunting scenes and thrilling portraits of characters so vivid that we remember their words and feel their fear and hunger for the rest of our lives. In the two main characters, the white-shouldered, irresistible Scarlett and the flashy, contemptuous Rhett, Margaret Mitchell not only conveyed a timeless story of survival under the harshest of circumstances, she also created two of the most famous lovers in the English-speaking world since Romeo and Juliet.

Sweeping us into the inner sanctum of Boston society, into the Beacon Hill town houses and exclusive private clubs where only the city's wealthiest and most powerful congregate, this novel gives us--through the story of one family and its patriarch, the recently deceased George Apley--the...  more

Sweeping us into the inner sanctum of Boston society, into the Beacon Hill town houses and exclusive private clubs where only the city's wealthiest and most powerful congregate, this novel gives us--through the story of one family and its patriarch, the recently deceased George Apley--the portrait of an entire society in transition. Gently satirical and rich with drama, the novel moves from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression as it projects George Apley's world--and subtly reveals a life in which success and accomplishment mask disappointment and regret, a life of extreme and enviable privilege that is nonetheless an imperfect life.

RELIVE THE WONDER OF A CHILDHOOD FAVORITE THAT HAS BEEN CAPTURING THE HEARTS OF READERS FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY. An instant bestseller when it was released in 1938, this Pulitzer Prize winner has been read and loved by school-age children across the nation for more than fifty years. In...  more

RELIVE THE WONDER OF A CHILDHOOD FAVORITE THAT HAS BEEN CAPTURING THE HEARTS OF READERS FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY. An instant bestseller when it was released in 1938, this Pulitzer Prize winner has been read and loved by school-age children across the nation for more than fifty years. In this classic story of the Baxter family and their wild, hard, and satisfying life in remote central Florida, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings has written one of the great novels of our times. A rich and varied tale -- tender in its understanding of boyhood, crowded with the excitement of the backwoods hunt, with vivid descriptions of the primitive, beautiful hammock country, written with humor and earthy philosophy -- The Yearling is a novel for readers of all ages. Its glowing picture of a life refreshingly removed from modern patterns of living is universal in its revelation of simple courageous people and the beliefs they must live by. This edition, complete with a new introduction by author Ivan Doig, will be cherished for years to come and will make a welcome addition to any booklover's shelf.

One of the greatest and most socially significant novels of the twentieth century, Steinbeck's controversial masterpiece indelibly captured America during the Great Depression through the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads. Intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision,...  more

One of the greatest and most socially significant novels of the twentieth century, Steinbeck's controversial masterpiece indelibly captured America during the Great Depression through the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads. Intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, tragic but ultimately stirring in its insistence on human dignity, The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is not only a landmark American novel, but it is as well an extraordinary moment in the history of our national conscience. Dorothy Allison on John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath: "John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is a novel completely of it's time -- but that time is as much the concrete nineties as the dust bowl thirties. With language that echoes the poetry of the gospels and characters who cling to simple human decency under the most horrific assaults, it is both a work of social criticism and a celebration of the American character. The Joad family speaks to us of all the homeless and displaced families on our streets today, and to the fears and prejudices that tempt so many of us to close our eyes or look away. In telling the story of the Joads, John Steinbeck has retold the story of this nation. We are not a small mean people, Steinbeck's work proclaims, and to prove it he showed us the courage and grace in the poorest of us."

This novel embraces the period from the Wall Street Crash of 1929 to the Nazi Blood Purge of 1934. Wm. Schuman, Professor of Political Science at Williams College said "There is nothing I have read, in prose or verse, fiction of fact, which has impressed me so vividly with the realities of...  more

This novel embraces the period from the Wall Street Crash of 1929 to the Nazi Blood Purge of 1934. Wm. Schuman, Professor of Political Science at Williams College said "There is nothing I have read, in prose or verse, fiction of fact, which has impressed me so vividly with the realities of National Socialism. Sinclair's pictures of the Nazi leaders are superb, and he has almost achieved the impossible in catching the spirit and atmosphere of the movement." As the noose of history pulls tighter, the men and women of Sinclair's imagining grow in maturity and power, and the readers of his story -- wherever they may choose to pick up the thread -- gain a new perspective on the world through which they lived and are living.

THIS IS FLAVIN'S BEST-KNOWN NOVEL. IT WON THE PULITZER PRIZE IN 1944... FROM MSN ENCARTA: "Flavin's best-known novel, Journey in the Dark (1943), describes a man's rise from youthful poverty to wealth as a wallpaper manufacturer in Chicago." Journey in the Dark...  more

THIS IS FLAVIN'S BEST-KNOWN NOVEL. IT WON THE PULITZER PRIZE IN 1944... FROM MSN ENCARTA: "Flavin's best-known novel, Journey in the Dark (1943), describes a man's rise from youthful poverty to wealth as a wallpaper manufacturer in Chicago." Journey in the Dark tells the story of Sam Braden. His childhood takes place in poverty during the late nineteenth century. Sam is the youngest of four children. His family lives squarely on the wrong side of the tracks, trapped in a limited existence of which young Sam is blissfully unaware until the year he realizes that he didn't get a sled for Christmas because his family is poor. He determines that he will not perpetuate poverty. His ambition is not to be rich and powerful, but to be comfortable - to rise above the circumstances of his youth. He sets about achieving that goal in a methodical fashion. He works hard, he takes risks, and eventually becomes a successful businessman.

An Italian-American major in World War II wins the love and admiration of the local townspeople when he searches for a replacement for the 700 year-old town bell that had been melted down for bullets by the fascists.

All the King's Men tells the story of Willie Stark, a southern-fried politician who builds support by appealing to the common man and playing dirty politics with the best of the back-room deal-makers. Though Stark quickly sheds his idealism, his right-hand man, Jack Burden -- who narrates the...  more

All the King's Men tells the story of Willie Stark, a southern-fried politician who builds support by appealing to the common man and playing dirty politics with the best of the back-room deal-makers. Though Stark quickly sheds his idealism, his right-hand man, Jack Burden -- who narrates the story -- retains it and proves to be a thorn in the new governor's side. Stark becomes a successful leader, but at a very high price, one that eventually costs him his life. The award-winning book is a play of politics, society and personal affairs, all wrapped in the cloak of history.