The clever but lonely feline hero of this charming tale pursues a friendship that leads to comic confusion. "A lighthearted concoction of extraordinary events, told with affection and humor." — The New York Times.

Jean Stafford burst on the literary scene in 1944, when, at the age of twenty-nine, she published her bestselling novel, Boston Adventure. Three years later, Life magazine hailed her as the "most brilliant of the new fiction writers." Bafflingly, for the rest of her life, Stafford would struggle--and fail--to capitalize on that early promise. David Roberts' compelling biography examines Stafford's disastrous marriages, including her first marriage to the volatile poet Robert Lowell, which culminated for her in a lengthy stay in a psychiatric hospital. Beautiful and gifted, Stafford squandered her health as well as her talent, ending her life embittered and alone.

One of America's best short story writers and author of three fine novels, Boston Adventure (1944), The Mountain Lion (1947), and The Catherine Wheel (1952), Jean Stafford has been rediscovered by another generation of readers and scholars. Although her novels and her Pulitzer Prize–winning short stories were widely read in the 1940s and 1950s, her fiction has received less critical attention than that of other distinguished contemporary American women writers such as Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, and Eudora Welty. In this literary biography, Charlotte M. Goodman traces the life of the brilliant yet troubled Jean Stafford and reassesses her importance. Drawing on a wealth of original material, Goodman describes the vital connections between Stafford's life and her fiction. She discusses Stafford's difficult family relationships, her tempestuous first marriage to the poet Robert Lowell, her unresolved conflicts about gender roles, her alcoholism and bouts with depression—and her amazing ability to transform the chaotic details of her life into elegant works of fiction. These wonderfully crafted works offer insightful portraits of alienated and isolated characters, most of whom exemplify not only human estrangement in the modern world, but also the special difficulties of girls and women who refuse to play traditional roles. Goodman locates Jean Stafford within the literary world of the 1940s and 1950s. In her own right, and through her marriages to Robert Lowell, Life magazine editor Oliver Jensen, and journalist A. J. Liebling, Stafford associated with many of the major literary figures of her day, including the Southern Fugitives, the New York intellectual coterie, and writers for the New Yorker, to which she regularly contributed short stories. Goodman also describes Stafford's sustaining friendships with other women writers, such as Evelyn Scott and Caroline Gordon, and with her New Yorker editor, Katharine S. White. This highly readable biography will appeal to a wide audience interested in twentieth-century literature and the writing of women's lives.

Includes Part 1, Number 2: Books and Pamphlets, Including Serials and Contributions to Periodicals July - December)

Elephi, a well known cat, is looking for a playmate and some intelligent conversation. But after a new companion is discovered, there are lots of confusion, and some rollicking fun!

On t.p.: An annotated graded list of books in many fields for adolescents who are reluctant to read or find reading difficult.