Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne's Books and Stories

The Scarlet Letter

Horror

5.0

Delve into The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne's meditation on human alienation and its effect on the soul in this story set in seventeenth-century Massachusetts and be dazzled by literature. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's dark novel, The Scarlet Letter, a single sinful act ruins the lives of three people. None more so than Hester Prynne, a young, beautiful, and dignified woman, who conceived a child out of wedlock and receives the public punishment of having to always wear a scarlet "A" on her clothing. She refuses to reveal the father of her child, which could lighten her sentence. Her husband, the aptly-named Roger Chillingworth, who Hester thought had died in a shipwreck but was actually being held captive by Native Americans, arrives at the exact moment of her deepest public shaming and vows to get revenge. Her lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, remains safely unidentified, but is wracked with guilt. Though originally published in 1850, the story is set in seventeenth-century Massachusetts among Hawthorne's Puritan ancestors. In The Scarlet Letter, he created a story that highlighted both their weaknesses and their strengths. His knowledge of their beliefs and his admiration for their way of life was balanced by his concerns about their rigid and oppressive rules. Complete and unabridged, this elegantly designed, clothbound edition features an elastic closure and a new introduction by Mike Lee Davis.

The House of the Seven Gables

Horror

5.0

A family burdened by the sins of their forebears seeks redemption in this Gothic masterpiece from one of the most influential voices in American literature In a small New England town, the haunted halls of Pyncheon House trap its current owners—Hepzibah Pyncheon and her brother, Clifford—in an atmosphere of gloom and despair. Two hundred years ago, their ancestor seized the property from a man sentenced to death for practicing witchcraft. At his execution, the man placed a curse on the Pyncheons, and the family has been plagued by tragedy ever since. Enlivened by the arrival of Phoebe, a pretty young relative who begins a tentative romance with Holgrave, their mysterious attic lodger, Hepzibah and Clifford hope that the curse has finally lifted. But before a new day can dawn, they must first contend with Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, whose greed and treachery threaten to doom the family forevermore. Inspired by the role his ancestors played in the Salem witch trials, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The House of the Seven Gables to explore the complicated legacy of the Puritans. First published in 1851, his savage indictment of the darkness at the heart of the American dream is more powerful than ever.