Bedtime stories for adults

Try The Country of the Pointed Firs for village company, or Rip Van Winkle for a short imaginative tale. The first follows a visiting writer's summer on the Maine coast; the second takes a good-natured villager into the Catskill Mountains, where a strange encounter leads to an extraordinary sleep.

For an evening read, consider Glimpses of Bengal, The Book of Tea or My First Summer in the Sierra. Their subjects offer different starting points: rivers and sunsets in personal letters, beauty approached through the tea ceremony, or a naturalist's attention to mountain plants, animals and weather.

Rip Van Winkle is the short-story choice here, with a village, a mountain walk and a mysterious sleep at its centre. For another kind of brief piece, consider the short essays in Tremendous Trifles, which begin with everyday things such as chalk or a morning in bed.

For this list, the guiding choices are quiet settings, warm company and attention to ordinary things, rather than any promise of sleep. Choose village conversations in The Country of the Pointed Firs, river observations in Glimpses of Bengal, or reflections on simple beauty in The Book of Tea.

Start with Glimpses of Bengal or The Country of the Pointed Firs for an evening centred on places and people. Tagore's letters describe rivers, village landings and changing seasons; Jewett's fiction follows a summer visitor into the life of a Maine fishing village through friendship with her landlady.