Familiar Faces: Stories of People You Know
Oct 2013 · Open Road Media
Ebook
310
Pages
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About this ebook
The #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Circular Staircase explores domestic anguish and delight in this short story collection.
On a transatlantic voyage, a man fills with rage as his wife fusses over her makeup, filling their cramped cabin with powders, oils, and discarded clothes. It would be fine if he could open the porthole, but the porter has ordered it shut—lest a German submarine spot the light.
Back in America, an old man with failing health stares out his window and worries about the world. And the wife of a serial philanderer realizes, to her surprise, that she has finally grown tired of her husband’s humiliating displays.
These are the people of Mary Roberts Rinehart’s short fiction. Young and old, beautiful and ugly, joyous and downtrodden—they are ordinary people, consumed with the pains and privations of everyday life. Created with Rinehart’s impeccably light touch, they are more than characters on a page—they are a mirror in which we may recognize ourselves.
On a transatlantic voyage, a man fills with rage as his wife fusses over her makeup, filling their cramped cabin with powders, oils, and discarded clothes. It would be fine if he could open the porthole, but the porter has ordered it shut—lest a German submarine spot the light.
Back in America, an old man with failing health stares out his window and worries about the world. And the wife of a serial philanderer realizes, to her surprise, that she has finally grown tired of her husband’s humiliating displays.
These are the people of Mary Roberts Rinehart’s short fiction. Young and old, beautiful and ugly, joyous and downtrodden—they are ordinary people, consumed with the pains and privations of everyday life. Created with Rinehart’s impeccably light touch, they are more than characters on a page—they are a mirror in which we may recognize ourselves.
About the author
DIVDIVMary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958) was one of the United States’s most popular early mystery authors. Born in Pittsburgh to a clerk at a sewing machine agency, Rinehart trained as a nurse and married a doctor after her graduation from nursing school. She wrote fiction in her spare time until a stock market crash sent her and her young husband into debt, forcing her to lean on her writing to pay the bills. Her first two novels, The Circular Staircase (1908) and The Man in Lower Ten (1909), established her as a bright young talent, and it wasn’t long before she was one of the nation’s most popular mystery novelists./divDIV
Among her dozens of novels are The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry (1911), which began a six-book series, and The Bat (originally published in 1920 as a play), which was among the inspirations for Bob Kane’s Batman. Credited with inventing the phrase “The butler did it,” Rinehart is often called an American Agatha Christie, even though she began writing much earlier than Christie, and was much more popular during her heyday. /div/div
Among her dozens of novels are The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry (1911), which began a six-book series, and The Bat (originally published in 1920 as a play), which was among the inspirations for Bob Kane’s Batman. Credited with inventing the phrase “The butler did it,” Rinehart is often called an American Agatha Christie, even though she began writing much earlier than Christie, and was much more popular during her heyday. /div/div
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