John P Marquand

The career of an American opportunist who is driven to power by his own sense of insecurity and self-doubt.

In preparation for the twenty-fifth reunion of his class at Harvard, Harry Pulham is asked to collect and edit the personal histories of his fellow alumni. A glance at the previous year's class book tells him just how tedious the assignment will be: "I have been very busy all this time practising corporation law and trying to raise a family," a typical entry reads. "I still like to go to the football games and cheer for Harvard." Harry's autobiography...

"Marital and parental problems of a Hollywood writer." Cf. Hanna, A. Mirror for the nation. Personal story of successful play rewriter who feels that somewhere in life he has missed the way.

A man glances back on his youth in a small town as he approaches a promotional opportunity late in life. Raised in the small town of Clyde, Massachusetts, Charles Gray has worked long and hard to become a vice president at the privately owned Stuyvesant Bank in Manhattan. But at the most crucial moment of his career, when his focus should be on reading his boss's intentions and competing with his chief rival for promotion, Charles finds himself hopelessly...

"A down-on-his luck American airman...a beautiful international adventuress...a mysterious Chinese courier...a scrap of paper worth many lives and the peace of the entire world...and a jigsaw pattern of treachery and sudden death that had been expertly designed to deceive and destroy. Enter the inimitable Mr. Moto, the only one who could hope to decipher and defuse the situation. Casey Lee, the airman, would never forget this extraordinary figure...

Polly Fulton, the daughter of one of America's most successful and admired businessmen, lives with her parents and brother in a thirty-room apartment on New York City's Park Avenue. Yet she despises the superficial trappings of wealth and delights in defying convention. In the months before America enters World War II, she shocks her family and friends by dumping her longtime boyfriend, Bob Tasmin, and marrying radical journalist Tom Brett. As the...

Tale of romance in an American seaport town.

The late George Apley: A satire of Boston's upper class. The title character is a Harvard-educated WASP living on Beacon Hill in downtown Boston. It is an epistolary novel, made up mostly of letters to and from the title character. Wickford Point: This novel offers a moving evocation of an eccentric, fraying New England aristocratic family (including an amusing send-up of an Ivy League professor). H.M. Pulham, Esquire: Harry Pulham is sweet, pathetic...

A collection of papers and short stories.