<p><strong>Volume two of Edith Wharton&rsquo;s excursions into the chilling and other worldly</strong></p>

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<p>The American author Edith Wharton (nee Jones), was born in New York during the American Civil War in 1862. She came from a prestigious family background which, incidentally though tellingly, inspired the perennially familiar phrase, &lsquo;keeping up with the Joneses&rsquo;. Perhaps predictably, she married into another prosperous family when she became the wife of Bostonian, &lsquo;Teddy&rsquo; Wharton in 1883. Edith&rsquo;s wealth opened the world to her and she became a prodigious traveller and lived for periods of time in Europe. Always creative, Edith became a proficient interior designer, garden designer and was a successful socialite becoming a style setter of her day. Her writing was, however, her most outstanding achievement. Wharton wrote novels, short stories, travel books and poetry. She was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for literature for &lsquo;Age of Innocence&rsquo; (1920) and was nominated for the Nobel prize for literature on three occasions. She became a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour for her work in support of the Allied cause during the First World War. Since Edith Wharton wrote at least 85 short stories and was a woman of her times it would be surprising if she had not contributed, frequently with an American twist, to the genre of supernatural and bizarre fiction. Indeed, her taste and talent for chilling tales and her readership&rsquo;s enthusiastic appetite for them have ensured this Leonaur collection fills two satisfying volumes.</p>

<p>Stories in this volume include: &lsquo;All Souls&rsquo;&rsquo;, &lsquo;The Lady&rsquo;s Maid&rsquo;s Bell&rsquo;, &lsquo;Xingu&rsquo;, &lsquo;The Bolted Door&rsquo;, &lsquo;Mr. Jones&rsquo; and twelve others.</p>

<p>Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket.</p>