The fiction of John Steinbeck has amassed generations of admirers since first making its mark on the literary landscape in the mid-20th century. The Long Valley is a collection of 12 short stories set in the author's birthplace of Salinas Valley, California. A must-read for Steinbeck fans and for all lovers of American literature, the collection includes "The Murder," "The Chrysanthemums," "The Vigilante," and the classic Red Pony tales.

One of the great heroines of American literature, Isabel Archer, journeys to Europe in order to, as Henry James writes in his 1908 Preface, “affront her destiny.” James began The Portrait of a Lady without a plot or subject, only the slim but provocative notion of a young woman taking control of her fate. The result is a richly imagined study of an American heiress who turns away her suitors in an effort to first establish—and then protect—her