8 h 18 minAudiobook6 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 8 h 18 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when one woman treats love as a game, and everyone around her plays for keeps?
In Booth Tarkington’s The Flirt, Cora Madison knows how to make a man feel chosen. A tilted head, a moment of attention, and another admirer joins her circle. In her Midwestern town, charm draws people close—but Cora gives little thought to what their feelings might cost them.
Her steadier sister, Laura Madison, gives more than she asks and quietly feels the effects of Cora’s choices. Then Valentine Corliss arrives, a glamorous outsider whose polished manner attracts attention. Around them, family life and courtship become a sharp social comedy about admiration, honesty, and the people left carrying the hurt.
What you’ll discover
- Charm with a cost Meet a young woman whose hunger for admiration makes other people’s feelings dangerously easy to overlook.
- A sister in the shadow Follow Laura’s quiet generosity as Cora’s choices reach beyond romance and into the family home.
- The outsider’s polished appeal Watch Valentine Corliss bring the glamour of elsewhere into a town ready to notice him.
- Small-town eyes and ears Enter a closely observed Midwestern world where manners, courtship, and family life invite humor and sympathy.
- When play becomes pain Consider what people owe each other when one treats lightly what another takes to heart.
Who will love it
You will love this if you enjoy American city life in the early twentieth century, witty family comedy, and clever, many-sided characters, or if you like stories where a charming newcomer stirs up a whole community.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A stranger in white arrives on Corliss Street
- Cora is the family's brightest and busiest actress
- Three men circle Cora and none can hold her
- A quiet sister writes love in a padlocked book
- Corliss offers oil in Italy and a way to riches
- Cora is pushed to help, and her father pays
- Hedrick fights his sister with a boy's weapons
- An old man in the park watches Corliss closely
- What the novel says about charm and performance
Who’s who
- Cora MadisonThe lovely younger Madison sister, who loves attention and tries to bend the men around her to her will.
- Laura MadisonCora's older sister, a quiet pianist who keeps a secret in a padlocked ledger.
- Valentine CorlissA polished stranger back from Europe who wants to sell his old house and raise money for an oil scheme.
- Richard LindleyA gentle, wistful businessman who loves Cora and wants to marry her.
- Hedrick MadisonThe thirteen-year-old brother, sharp-tongued and imaginative, at war with Cora and set on finding Laura's book.
- Ray VilasA thin, witty young man from Kentucky whose love for Cora has turned to drink and bitter wit.
- Wade TrumbleA small, loud man in mortgages and loans who argues about everything and would give a great deal for Cora's attention.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 8 h 18 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 6 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear Le Flirt in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Le Flirt
by Booth Tarkington · 1913
Cora plants a rose in a wastebasket and stages a meeting with Valentine Corliss.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
A pink rose lies at the bottom of a wastebasket, and a pretty girl wants a stranger to find it. So begins The Flirt by Booth Tarkington, a comic and sharply observed American novel.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A stranger in white arrives on Corliss Street
Valentine Corliss walks up the street named for his grandfather after seventeen years abroad. He wears a fine white suit and carries himself like a man who has seen Paris and Naples. He has come to see Mr. Madison, who rents the old Corliss house from him.
The house is a gloomy brick building with knobby furniture and chairs freshly gilded to dry in the hall. A cool, dark-eyed girl named Laura opens the door and shows no interest in him at all. Then her younger sister Cora drifts in, humming, as if searching for a book, and the rose in the wastebasket does its work.
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What is The Flirt about?
When a smooth stranger named Valentine Corliss arrives with a money-making scheme, the family is drawn into his plans.
Who is Valentine Corliss?
He is a polished man who grew up on Corliss Street and returns after many years abroad. He owns the old house where the Madisons live and claims to have found oil in Italy.
What is the ledger in The Flirt?
It is Laura Madison's padlocked book, where she writes in secret about her feelings. Her brother Hedrick hunts for it, and its contents matter a great deal later in the story.
The author
Booth Tarkington
1869–1946 · American novelist
Booth Tarkington was an American novelist born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1869. He lived in Indianapolis and spent summers in Kennebunkport, Maine. He wrote Penrod (1914), Seventeen (1916), The Magnificent Ambersons (1918), and Alice Adams (1921). He also wrote plays. He died in Indianapolis in 1946.
More by Booth Tarkington
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