When she was young, Anna Summers married a wealthy American named Fraser Leath, whose one real passion was his collection of snuffboxes. Really! Wouldn't you just know how well that'd work out? And then Mr. Snuffbox snuffs it, and Anna runs into an old acquaintance, George Darrow, who still wants to marry her. Until he gets involved with a poor girl named Sophie Viner . . . It sounds like the stuff of soap opera, but this is an Edith Wharton novel. And it really is something special, even if the plot does sound like something from The Days of Our Lives. If you haven't read Edith Wharton, you're in for a treat.

Author Biography

Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt.