The Stories of Alice Adams

"Alice Adams has an inimitable 'voice'-quick, deft, brilliantly evocative and specific. There is always something special about a story of hers, like a watercolor perfectly executed." --Joyce Carol Oates Award-winning writer Alice Adams, whose major themes were the varied lives of contemporary women and the hidden workings of human relationships is equally treasured for her short stories and her novels. The stories collected here represent the full range of her career, which included 25 appearances in The New Yorker, 6 O.Henry First Prizes out of a total of 23 appearances, as well as inclusion in numerous Best American Short Stories anthologies. In story after story insight joins with grace to show us the truth about the lives of people around us. Included: "Verlie I Say Unto You," "Beautiful Girl," "The Swastika on the Door," "Greyhound People," "The Girl Across the Room," Truth or Consequences," "Separate Planes," "Your Doctor Loves You," "Old Love Affairs," "Earthquake Damage," and 43 other classic stories.

Alice Adams was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia and raised in North Carolina, and graduated from Radcliffe College. She was the recipient of an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and the O. Henry Lifetime Achievement Award. She was the author of five collections of short stories and ten novels, among them Listening to Billie, Superior Women, Second Chances, and A Southern Exposure. She lived in San Francisco until her death in 1999.