Hailed by Henry James as "the finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth in the country", Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter reaches to our nation's historical and moral roots for the material of great tragedy. Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the defiant Hester Prynne; the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; and the obsessed,...

A mysterious minister who never removes the black veil shrouding his face, an eccentric scientist who experiments with the fate of his friends, a cheerful tombstone carver who speaks the wisdom of the graveyard, these are but a few of the unusual New Englanders you'll meet in Twice-Told Tales.

Aylmer is an inventor, the greatest of his age. But his heart is torn between his devotion to science and his love for his beautiful wife, Georgiana, whose appearance would be perfect were it not for the small red birthmark on her cheek. Unnaturally obsessed with the blemish, Aylmer sets out to erase it from his beloved's face-and discovers that his heedless quest to master Nature has disastrous consequences.   A Gothic romance both chilling and...

A retelling of classical Greek myths.

Originally published in 1853, author Nathaniel Hawthorne delivers a vibrant selection of mythological tales inspired by some of the most popular figures in Greek lore. Tanglewood Tales is filled with whimsical characters and their fantastical stories. Nathaniel Hawthorne brings Ancient Greek mythology to life in this collection of Tanglewood Tales. The author reinterprets the stories for a younger audience with a broad appeal. The book contains heroes...

Adaptations of Greek myths: The Gorgon's Head, The Golden Touch,The Paradise of Children, The Three Golden Apples, The Miraculous Pitcher, and The Chimaera.

"The Great Stone Face" is a short story published by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850. The story reappeared in a full-length book, The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales, published by Ticknor, Reed & Fields in 1852. It has since been republished and anthologized many times. Hawthorne sets the scene in a rural valley located in an unnamed U.S. state that resembles New Hampshire. A rock formation in a nearby notch is imagined, by many locals and visitors,...

"Young Goodman Brown" is a short story published in 1835 by American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. The story takes place in 17th century Puritan New England. In a symbolic fashion, the story follows Young Goodman Brown's journey into self-scrutiny, which results in his loss of virtue and belief. --from Wikipedia

I have sometimes produced a singular and not unpleasing effect, so far as my own mind was concerned, by imagining a train of incidents in which the spirit and mechanism of the faëry legend should be combined with the characters and manners of familiar life. In the little tale which follows a subdued tinge of the wild and wonderful is thrown over a sketch of New England personages and scenery, yet, it is hoped, without entirely obliterating the sober...

In my walks through the burial-ground of Edgartown- where the dead have lain so long that the soil, once enriched by their decay, has returned to its original barrenness -in that ancient burial-ground I noticed much variety of monumental sculpture. The elder stones, dated a century back or more, have borders elaborately carved with flowers and are adorned with a multiplicity of death's- heads, crossbones, scythes, hour-glasses, and other lugubrious...