For the first time, the complete stories of a Pulitzer Prize-winning master of the form, plus her fascinating portrait of the mother one of the world’s most infamous assassins

This volume collects for the first time the complete stories of a Pulitzer Prize-winning master of the form, a writer acclaimed for her acute psychological insight, exacting eye for detail, and mordant sensibility. Set in New England, Colorado, New York, and Europe, Jean Stafford’s stories intimately examine the lives of women and men beset by restlessness, dislocation, and isolation. The Interior Castle takes us inside an accident victim’s physical and mental pain; A Country Love Story chillingly depicts marital estrangement and mental breakdown amidst the solitude of a Maine winter; Bad Characters is the exuberant story of a young girl led into mischief by an incorrigible friend; and An Influx of Poets is a haunting story of a marriage wrecked by literary ambition and egotism. The volume also includes A Mother in History, Stafford’s controversial journalistic profile of Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother, Marguerite, and three revealing literary essays.