Complete Satire Mystery Romance & Women's Study

The Californians, her first novel in the post-Spanish era. Critics received this much more than Patience and a review in the The Spectator in the October 1, 1898 issue said it "was by far more convincing and attractive in delineating California manners and morals. . . . The novel fairly establishes her claim to be considered as one of the most vivid and entertaining interpreters of the complex characters of emancipated American womanhood."

She is best remembered for her "California Series", several novels and short stories dealing with the social history of California. The series includes The Splendid, Idle Forties (1902); The Conqueror (1902), which is a fictionalized biography of Alexander Hamilton; and her sensational, semi-autobiographical novel Black Oxen (1923), about an upper middle-age woman, who miraculously becomes young again after glandular therapy. The latter was adopted into the film Black Oxen in 1923.

Table of Contents

Black Oxen

The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories

Ancestors

The Living Present

The Sisters-In-Law

The Avalanche: A Mystery Story

Senator North

The Conqueror

The Doomswoman: An Historical Romance of Old California

What Dreams May Come

The Californians

A Daughter of the Vine

Black Oxen-

This tale of scientific rejuvenation was the number one best seller of 1923.

The Avalanche-

A wealthy businessman investigates his young and lovely wife -- and finds her history hides complications he hadn't anticipated.

Ancestors-

A young, rich American girl, after traveling all over the world with a father addicted to periodical dipsomania, loses this father, and before returning to her California chicken ranch goes to visit her English relatives. Her cousin is in the House of Commons, but suddenly becoming a peer is forced into the House of Lords. He decides to go to America. The story deals with American politics and especially with the conditions in San Francisco. The great earthquake and fire of 1906 bring about changes in the lives of the chief actors.

The Californians -

Mrs. Atherton is at her best in the clear-cut vivid stories of the Pacific Coast, whether she pictures "The Splendid Idle Forties" or, as here, the San Francisco of later days when the old ideas of Span were blending with those the "gringo" brought to form an entirely new type of aristocrat.

The Conqueror-

A fictionalized biography of Alexander Hamilton.

The Sisters-In-Law-

The tale might be termed an adventure in snobbery. There are snobs by divine right of birth within the Charmed Circle. Marriage affords entrance for the cultivated snobs of another sort, but they never become spiritually at one with the oldest residents within the Circle. The love of two sisters-in-law for the same man is complicated by these caste limitations.