Carson McCullers

With the publication of her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types...

Tall, awkward, and lonely, Frankie Addams has a vivid imagination but no friends. She spends most of her time in the kitchen, pouring out her heart to Berenice, the gentle family cook and housekeeper. Frankie's jealousy of her brother's impending marriage, and her curious belief that she must accompany him and his bride on their honeymoon in order to belong, drives her to strange measures. She devises a desperate plan, reinventing herself as the seemingly...

This collection assembles Carson McCullers' best stories, including her study of love and longing "The Ballad of the Sad Café." A haunting tale of a human triangle that culminates in an astonishing brawl, the novella introduces readers to Miss Amelia, a formidable southern woman whose café serves as the town's gathering place. Among other works, the collection also includes "Wunderkind," McCullers' first published story, written when she was only...

A story of black and white in the American South with Berenice Sadie Brown, a black cook who mothers the motherless Frankie Addams, a lonely over-imaginative Georgia girl.