Susan Fromberg Schaeffer

Anya is a myth, an epic...[by] a writer of remarkable power.--Washington Post

Anya

The love affair between the samurai Matsuhito and Lady Utsu, a poet, is rendered in beautiful detail in this epic romance set during the period of the decline of samurai culture in Japan. Reader's Guide included. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

The Snow Fox

The Madness of a Seduced Woman

Susan F. Schaeffer

Autobiography of Foudini M. Cat

"During all those years when everyone wanted me to tell them...how I came to fire that shot, I never wanted to talk. Now I think I do..." Agnes Dempster - young, beautiful, and accused of murder. Vermont, 1890. After an unhappy childhood, Agnes Dempster turns her back on her family and escapes to the city to begin a new life. There she meets Frank Holt, a local stonecutter, a man who captures her imagination and opens her eyes to an entirely different world. They begin a relationship, but over time Agnes becomes more dependent on Frank and this soon becomes an obsession - a dangerous one. And when she discovers her beloved is not as perfect as the image she had created of him, the cracks in her already fragile psyche begin to deepen. He is a betrayer, a man who will never make her happy. And as her life spirals out of control Agnes is propelled into a state of barely-controlled madness; a madness that leads to a chaotic and destructive resolution which will affect her and those around her for the rest of their lives...

A haunting and beautiful portrait of the families we form, the alliances we make, and the people we cherish, this early novel by the author of Buffalo Afternoon, is an enduring elegy, an extraordinary evocation of the one emotion that can bind us to one another all our lives. A celebration.--Margaret Atwood.

Love

Poems

The Witch and the Weather Report

A North Chittendon, un piccolo centro a quaranta chilometri da Montpelier, nel Vermont, è opinione diffusa che Agnes Dempster sia una ragazza molto fortunata. È la figlia di un facoltoso proprietario terriero e la nipote della donna più ricca della contea. Come se non bastasse, discende da Cecilia Druitt, la cui straordinaria bellezza si è tramandata a tutte le femmine della stirpe, di generazione in generazione. Bella era la nonna di Agnes, Eurydice. Bella è sua madre, Helen, che ha i capelli come tutte le Druitt, folti e scuri, come se a tingerli sia stata una nuvola o la foschia. Una sfumatura mai vista prima, che richiama in città frotte di artisti desiderosi di ritrarla. Helen ne va talmente fiera che non si taglia i capelli dall’età di tre anni e li porta raccolti in una grande crocchia sulla sommità del capo. Incantevole è anche Agnes, al punto tale che le capita spesso di incrociare sguardi increduli di poterla ammirare. Nessuno a North Chittendon sa, tuttavia, che, in casa Dempster, Agnes è sempre stata nient’altro che una creatura insignificante. È nata dopo la tragica morte di sua sorella Majella, di cui sua madre conserva gelosamente un ritratto sopra il camino in salotto che non permette a nessuno di toccare. È nata in un giorno di dicembre con facilità e senza timori. Quando, però, sua nonna la mostrò a sua madre, Helen scosse il capo e disse: «Prendila tu». Ed è così che Agnes si è sempre sentita come una stasi nella tempesta, un essere, una cosa inaspettata che non avrebbe mai avuto una parte vera nella storia. Cosa può fare una giovane donna con un simile destino se non decidere un giorno che niente del suo universo familiare le appartiene? E inventarsi un mondo nuovo, magari come commessa o ricamatrice a Montpelier? E cosa può fare quando incontra Frank Holt, un uomo con «gli occhi dello stesso colore dell’alveo del torrente illuminato dal sole», un affascinante seduttore desiderato da tutte le ragazze di Montpelier, se non innamorarsi completamente e perdutamente? E, infine, cosa può fare quando si imbatte nel più brutale dei tradimenti, se non cadere preda della follia più assoluta? Basato su una storia vera avvenuta alla fine nel 1890 nel Vermont, La follia di una donna innamorata è uno di quei rari libri capaci di restituirci i più sottili moti del cuore di una donna.

La follia di una donna innamorata

An embittered third wife, two children, a sister, and the friends and would-be biographer of a late flamboyant writer and womanizer find themselves drawn into a maelstrom of painful memories and encounters as they each seek to appropriate the man's estate for their own purposes. By the author of The Snow Fox. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.

Poison

Follows the lives of the family of Dr. John Steele and his wife, Edna, detailing their loves and their confrontations with small-town tyranny, nature's ravages, and disease

Time in Its Flight

"I came into the world like everything else that is born, willy-nilly." So the wise old housecat Foudini begins the delightful story of his life. It is the tale of his orphaned kittenhood; of how he was rescued, cowering and spitting and hissing, from a damp city basement and lured into the lives of the couple he came to call Warm and Pest ("All cats like to make up strange names for things" ). It is the story of how Warm and Pest became "his people" ("Human beings must be excellent mousers; they have such patience" ); of how he learned to tolerate and then to love "his" dog, Sam; and of his adventures at Cold House in the city and Mouse House in the country (he prefers Mouse House, for obvious reasons). With feline equanimity, he tells how he was saved from a racing, swollen river; of how he lost the most unlikely and dearest friend he had; and of how he gained a cat family of his own. And he regales us with news of the ghost cats who visit him in his dreams--the cats of Cleopatra and Freud among them--bringing him their ancient cat wisdom, which Foudini tries, none too successfully at first, to impart to Grace, the sleek and beautiful gray country cat new to the household. As Foudini sees it, Grace is desperately in need of his guidance, but being young and willful, she has other things on her mind . . . Yet even Grace comes to understand that Foudini M. Cat is well worth listening to. Warm and witty--and possessed of a surprisingly sophisticated narrative manner--Foudini is a cat with truly irrepressible, and irresistible, feline flair.

A Novel

The Autobiography of Foudini M. Cat

Form and Theme in the Novels of Vladimir Nabokov

Folding the Patterned Carpet

Follows the adventures of Arthur, a young and fearless dragon living with his tribe in northern Vermont, as he grows up, marries, becomes the leader of his tribe and together with a human friend tries to improve relations between dragons and people.

Susan Fromberg Schaeffer

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