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Smooth reading, very pretty, with graceful irony personifying superstition and fears in the unknown. The Apple Tree Table is a cool little ghost story where rationalistic skeptics were right, and it turns out that there is a mundane explanation. And oddly enough for Melville, at the end there is even a message of pro-Christianity.

This story began around Christmas, when a group of guys from the village of Melstock walked and sang carols. It was then that the cab driver Dick Dewey saw and fell in love at first sight with the new teacher Fancy Day who had just arrived. She is also looked after by a wealthy farmer Shiner, whom Father Day favors, and pastor Maybold, who considers himself the most suitable party for Fancy. But the...

Published in 1907, this little novel by the author of „The Age of Innocence” was considered controversial for its frank treatment of labor and industrial conditions, drug addiction, mercy killing, divorce, and second marriages. Clever, idealistic and poor John Amherst, the assistant manager of the cotton mill, is fed up with the deplorable working and living conditions of the workers in his charge....