Love Stories

Rinehart, Mary Roberts, 1876-1958Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.4

Word count: 401K words
Chapters: 41

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Love Stories by Mary Roberts RinehartAuthor: Rinehart, Mary Roberts, 1876-1958,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Mar 26, 2005

Editor's review

This short story collection comes from the American popular novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart, known for tight plotting and suspenseful buildup. Here she turns to romance, showing another side of her craft in light, deft storytelling about human relationships. The stories are short, briskly paced, and clear in character motivation—easy reading that still offers twists, well suited to dipping into one story at a time on a commute or before bed. For English learners, the moderate difficulty and natural sentence patterns make it a bridge from textbook English to reading literature in the original; for genre-fiction fans, it offers a window into the narrative rhythm and emotional expression of early twentieth-century popular short fiction. As a public-domain eBook from Project Gutenberg, it is easy to obtain and convenient to read and search on electronic devices. Note that the language and attitudes toward love carry the marks of their era; readers should approach them with a sense of literary history rather than expect contemporary romance writing.

Who it's for

A good fit for

English-speaking readers who enjoy short stories and want to finish complete stories in spare moments
Upper-intermediate and advanced English learners who want to move from textbooks to original literature
Readers interested in early twentieth-century American popular fiction and women authors
People who need light English reading to keep up a reading habit

Not a good fit for

Serious literary readers looking for long, deep reads with complex structure and grand themes
Beginners with weak English who cannot yet read English short stories smoothly
Contemporary readers with no interest in old-fashioned attitudes toward love and narrative conventions

Reading tips

Read one story first to gauge the language level, then decide between close reading and light reading
After each story, retell the plot and character relationships in two or three sentences to check comprehension
Mark unfamiliar words and look them up later to avoid breaking the story's rhythm
Read alongside other early twentieth-century American short stories to observe the style of the era

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

How difficult is the English in this book?

Overall it is moderately easy original short fiction: sentences are not long, the narration is straightforward, and the vocabulary is mostly everyday. Readers with a high-school-level English background who are used to reading English stories can usually move along smoothly; occasional period expressions can be understood from context and need not be checked word by word.

Do the stories need to be read in order?

The stories are relatively independent, so strict order is not necessary. You can start with one whose title appeals to you to judge whether the language level and style suit your taste, then decide whether to read the whole book—this saves time.

Any practical advice for reading the electronic edition?

Use reading software that supports dictionary lookup and annotation, and look up words only when they recur to reduce interruptions. You can first read a story quickly to grasp the plot, then go back over the details, balancing fluency and depth of understanding.

Comments

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About the author

Rinehart, Mary Roberts, 1876-1958 Author

Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958) was an American author known for her detective fiction and humorous sketches. The library holds 29 of her works, including The Circular Staircase, The Man in Lower Ten, A Poor Wise Man, The After House, Tish: The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions, Kings, Queens and Pawns: An American Woman at the Front, Tenting To-night, and The Confession. Her detective novels often unfold through female narrators and build suspense from everyday details, creating tension without losing a sense of humor; they have influenced later mystery and detective writing. Public information is limited, so no biographical details are conjectured here, and readers may come to know her narrative style and themes through the works listed above.