This collection contains ten tales -- including five that have never before appeared in book form -- by Hamet Prescott Spofford, the only woman writer to master the mode of the symbolic romance, which is often clamed to represent the mainstream of American fiction. Spofford dazzled readers in the early 1860s with a number of stories that seemed to enlarge the boundaries of romantic fiction. She established a reputation as the female heir to the literary tradition of Poe and Hawthorne with such works as the detective story "In a Cellar," the complex symbolic romance "The Amber Gods," and the frightening tale of frontier adventure. "Circumstance." These three stories provide the most important female counterpart to the works of the major male romantics and represent the final flowering of romantic fiction in New England.

Suspense, humor, and romance abound in this 1868 mystery, in which a gem stolen from a Hindu shrine resurfaces in an English country home — with a trio of watchful Brahmins hot on its trail.

Уильям Уилки Коллинз - известный английский писатель XIX века; драматург, автор многочисленных романов, пьес и рассказов. Роман “Лунный камень” по праву считается лучшим и одним из самых знаменитых романов автора. Увлекательный сюжет, в котором мастерски сплетаются тайна древнего проклятия и запутанная детективная история, отмечен тонким психологизмом. Неповторимая атмосфера старой доброй Англии и красивый живой слог до сих пор покоряют сердца читателей во всём мире. Читайте зарубежную литературу в оригинале!