Books by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The wealthy Colonel Pyncheon covets the carpenter Mathew Maule's land. A few years later, during the witch hysteria in Salem, Maule is brought before a judge on witchcraft charges and is sentenced to death. Before his execution, Maule curses the Pyncheon family. The Colonel, undaunted, continues to build an extravagant house on Maule's property. After the house is finished, however, the Colonel is found dead, and the property deed is missing. More than 200 years later, we meet the family in its decaying, gabled mansion, still haunted by the presence of dead ancestors: Hepzibah, an elderly gentlewoman fallen on hard times; her ineffectual brother, Clifford; and young Phoebe, a country maiden who cheerfully takes it upon herself to care for her two doddering relations. There's also Holgrave, a free-spirited daguerreotypist, who makes a surprising transformation into conventional respectability. Hawthorne's masterful tales describe the brooding hold of the past over the present, twisting and turning through many generations of a venerable New England family. A true classic of American literature. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

Hawthorne's first Wonder Book was so well received that he was induced to undertake another within eighteen months from the time of finishing the first. To this new volume, made up in the same way of Greek myths retold with a modern, free, half-realistic and half-fanciful tone, he gave the name Tanglewood Tales. The previous series having been ostensibly narrated by one Eustace Bright, among the hills of Berkshire, these additional stories in the like vein were represented as having been brought by Eustace Bright to Hawthorne. -- from George Parsons Lathrop's IntroductionAlso includes: Circe's Palace (Chapter: Circe's Palace), Proserpina, Ceres, Pluto and the Pomegranate Seed (Chapter: The Pomegranate Seed), Jason and the Golden Fleece (Chapter: The Golden Fleece).