Familiar Faces: Stories of People You Know

By Mary Roberts Rinehart

Stories of domestic anguish and delight from an American master.

On a transatlantic voyage, a man fills with rage as his wife fusses over her makeup, filling their cramped cabin with powders, oils, and discarded clothes. It would be fine if he could open the porthole, but the porter has ordered it shut -- lest a German submarine spot the light.

Back in America, an old man with failing health stares out his window and worries about the world. And the wife of a serial philanderer realizes, to her surprise, that she has finally grown tired of her husband's humiliating displays.

These are the people of Mary Roberts Rinehart's short fiction. Young and old, beautiful and ugly, joyous and downtrodden -- they are ordinary people, consumed with the pains and privations of everyday life. Created with Rinehart's impeccably light touch, they are more than characters on a page -- they are a mirror in which we may recognize ourselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784088217

Mary Roberts Rinehart

Often referred to as the American Agatha Christie, Mary Roberts Rinehart was an American journalist and writer who is best known for the murder mystery The Circular Staircase—considered to have started the “Had-I-but-known” school of mystery writing—and the popular Tish mystery series. A prolific writer, Rinehart was originally educated as a nurse, but turned to writing as a source of income after the 1903 stock market crash. Although primarily a fiction writer, Rinehart served as the Saturday Evening Post’s correspondent for from the Belgian front during the First World War, and later published a series of travelogues and an autobiography. Roberts died in New York City in 1958.