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."

    How many times have you missed the best bits of a Marx Brothers movie, failing to catch Groucho's famous one-liners because you were still laughing at the bit with Harpo and the zipped-up banana? And what about the lemonade stall? The mirror section? And the blue-tined ballet sequence?This book offers what the videos can't, ant that's a short cut to some of the funniest films of all time -- Monkey Business (1931), Duck Soup (1933), and A Day at the Races (1937) -- scripted by some of the wittiest screenwriters Hollywood ever produced.In addition to a generous number of stills from each movie, this bumper edition also includes a cast and production crew list for movie buffs as well as an Introduction by Karl French.