Best of
American

1937

The Rains Came


Louis Bromfield - 1937
    Hindus and Moslems, Brahmins and Untouchables, western missionaries and British colonial bureaucrats, the famous novelist brings to life the social conditions of the last decade of the British Raj.

Serve It Forth


M.F.K. Fisher - 1937
    F. K. Fisher takes readers on an animated journey through culinary history, beginning with the honey-loving Greeks and the immoderate Romans. Fisher recalls a hunt for snails and truffles with one of the last adepts in that art and recounts how Catherine de Medici, lonely for home cooking, touched off a culinary revolution by bringing Italian chefs to France. Each essay makes clear the absolute firmness of Fisher's taste--contrarian and unique--and her skill at stirring memory and imagination into a potent brew.

They Came Like Swallows


William Maxwell - 1937
    It tells of an ordinary American family overtaken by the devastating epidemic of the Spanish influenza of 1918. The book begins on the day before the armistice in a small midwestern town, and the events are seen from the perspective, in turn, of eight-year-old Peter Morison--called Bunny; of his older brother, Robert; and of their father. They are witnesses to a domestic tragedy that is written with beauty and a quite magnificent tenderness. William Maxwell has been described by The Washington Post as "one of America's most distinguished and distinctive stylists." John Updike has said that "Maxwell's voice is one of the wisest in American fiction; it is, as well, one of the kindest." The Times Literary Supplement declares that "Maxwell offers us scrupulously executed, moving landscapes of America's twentieth century, and they do not fade." The Saturday Review said,"They Came Like Swallows is one of those rare tales in which child-hood is reflected in the simplicity and intensity of its own experience."

The Education of Hyman Kaplan


Leo Rosten - 1937
    Over the next two years the magazine ran all 15 of the original stories that were eventually published in 1937 as The Education of Hyman Kaplan.

This Proud Heart


Pearl S. Buck - 1937
    Susan Gaylord is talented, loving, equipped with a strong moral sense, and adept at anything she puts her hand to, from housework to playing the piano to working with marble and clay. But the intensity of her artistic calling comes at a price, isolating her from other people—at times, even from her own family. When her husband dies and she remarries, she finds herself once again comparing the sacrifice of solitude to that of commitment. With a heroine who is naturalistic yet compellingly larger than life, This Proud Heart is incomparable in its sympathetic study of character. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Pearl S. Buck including rare images from the author’s estate.

Their Eyes Were Watching God


Zora Neale Hurston - 1937
    Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.

Man with the Blue Guitar


Wallace Stevens - 1937
    

Sunrise


Grace Livingston Hill - 1937
    So, when he is fired from the bank the same day it is robbed, the blame quickly falls to him. Unable to defend himself, Jason flees town. Joyce begs her wealthy friend Rowan to help prove Jason’s innocence, but now Rowan has also gone missing.

Collected Stories, 1911-1937


Edith Wharton - 1937
    With this two-volume set, The Library of America presents the finest of Wharton's achievement in short fiction: 67 stories drawn from the entire span of her writing life, including the novella-length works The Touchstone, Sanctuary, and Bunner Sisters, eight shorter pieces never collected by Wharton, and many stories long out-of-print.Her range of setting and subject matter is dazzling, and her mastery of style consistently sure. Here are all the aspects of Wharton's art: her satire, sometimes gentle, sometimes dark and despairing, of upper-class manners; her unblinking recognition of the power of social convention and the limits of passion; her merciless exposure of commercial motivations; her candid exploration of relations between the sexes.The stories range with cosmopolitan ease from her native New York to the salons and summer hotels of Newport, Paris, and the Italian lakes. The depth of her response to World War I is registered in such works as "The Marne." Of particular interest are the remarkable stories, which treat occult and supernatural themes rarely encountered in her novels, such as the classic ghost stories "The Eyes" and "Pomegranate Seed."

The Complete Novels and Selected Tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne


Nathaniel Hawthorne - 1937
    Higginbotham's catastrophe --Wakefield --The great carbuncle --David Swan --The hollow of the three hills --Dr. Heidegger's experiment --Legends of the Province House --The ambitious guest --Peter Goldthwaite's treasure --The Shaker bridal --Endicott and the Red Cross --From Mosses from an old manse : The birthmark --Young Goodman Brown --Rappaccini's daughter --Mrs. Bullfrog --The Celestial railroad --The procession of life --Feathertop : a moralized legend --Egotism ; or, the bosom serpent --Drowne's wooden image --Roger Malvin's burial --The artist of the beautiful --From the snow image : The snow image : a childish miracle --The Great Stone Face --Ethan Brand --The Canterbury pilgrims --The devil in manuscript --My kinsman, Major Molineux

By the Waters of Babylon


Stephen Vincent Benét - 1937
    Each book in the series has been designed with today's young reader in mind. As the words come to life, students will develop a lasting appreciation for great literature.The humor of Mark Twain ... the suspense of Edgar Allan Poe...the danger of Jack London ... the sensitivity of Katherine Mansfield. Creative Short Stories has it all and will prove to be a welcome addition to any library.

The Life and Death of a Spanish Town.


Elliot Paul - 1937
    Fishermen, hoteliers, store owners, farmers and artists find their lives shattered.