Penrod Schofield ia an 11-year-old middle-class boy in a small city in the Midwestern United States. Penrod and his friends decide to start their own detective agency with hilarious results! A children’s book involving a boy detective who “solves” various mysteries and more than often gets himself into trouble as a result.

The adventures of Penrod Schofield, twelve-year-old Mid-western boy. His pranks ans escapades are numerous, among them a slingshot incident, a part in a play as Child Sir Lancelot, a romance with a little girl, and a tar fight.

Mid-uest Babbitt, whose dream bring him unhappiness.

This early novel by Tarkington (1903) tells the story of two men vying for the attentions of the same woman, Sylvia. Mr. Sudgeberry, the narrator, is a loquacious pedant. William Fentriss is a happy-go-lucky ne'er-do-well. Comic sparks are struck as the two men seek to undermine each other in Sylvia's eyes.

Kate Fennigate was a manager, even as a young child; she influenced her mother, her schoolmates, and, particularly, her father. Because of her good manners, however, Kate was never offensive in her desire to lead. Her father, who had showed great promise as a lawyer when he was young, had permitted both women and liquor to interfere with his career. Mrs. Fennigate had no great interest in life except eating, and Mr. Fennigate had no great interest...

A delightful story set in Depression-era Manhattan. A new college grad stumbles into a job as an assistant to an art dealer.

Every summer, as the best resort from heat and the vapors, the Bullfinches, Allstovers, Timberlakes et al. go to Mary's Neck on the Maine Coast. There they loll on the beaches, collect antiques, sunburns and memories for their coming hibernations in more urban homes.

Earl Tinker, by means of hard work and shrewdness, has risen to president of the Illinois and Union Paper Company, and he is now taking his wife and daughter on the Grand Tour of northern Africa. Aboard ship he encounters a number of cultured European highfalutins who, of course, are appalled by Tinker and his crassness. These hollow bores are in for just as much attack as Tinker, and they don't have anything near the joie de livre as Earl Tinker....

These three novels trace the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in a fictional Midwestern town, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new-money families, which did...