Booth Tarkington

The American Classics Collection: Volume II is a century-spanning collection of 15 classic novels, short stories, essay, and poetry by American authors, read by a cast of incredible narrators including Adam Sims; Nathan Osgood; Robert G. Slade; Jonathan Keeble, Katherine Fenton; and more.

Alice Adams follows the day-to-day life of a young woman who dreams of climbing the social ladder and escaping from her middle-class background. She struggles with the constant tension between her parents and her older brother.

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

The second book in what would become known as Booth Tarkington's "growth trilogy" is about a small Midwestern town rapidly transforming into a modern industrial city....

Bigger, newer, faster. Demolish and rebuild, then demolish and rebuild again. Smoke, soot, and noise are the badges of prosperity, and growth is for growth's sake....

Bigger, newer, faster. Demolish and rebuild, then demolish and rebuild again. Smoke, soot, and noise are the badges of prosperity, and growth is for growth's sake....

In this American classic, 17-year-old William is in the throes of first love. Lola Pratt, the object of his affection, is visiting her cousin in William's town for the summer. William finds obstacles at every turn in winning her affections....

Penrod is a classic and hilarious tale of one 11-year-old boy's unceasing series of misadventures in an early 20th-century Midwestern town, with questionable ethnic descriptions and dialogue abridged....

Plucky and romantic Alice tries to rise above the crudities of her hopelessly shabby background in this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic....

This is the hilarious story of the escapades of 12-year-old Penrod Schofield, whose active imagination keeps him in hot water at home and at school....

A young man disguised as a barber forces a noble whom he has caught cheating at cards to introduce him to the lovely Lady Mary Carlisle....

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel focuses on materialism and the fortunes of a Midwestern family in the early 20th century....

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published in 1918, The Magnificent Ambersons chronicles the changing fortunes of three generations....

The American literary tradition has, in a far shorter span of time than others throughout history, achieved a glowing and glittering reputation. From its transatlantic roots it has absorbed the sons and daughters of other cultures, other lands and made them part of her own....