4 h 27 minAudiobook4 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What secrets can a quiet house keep when a patient mind refuses to let a crime stay closed?
In The Old Stone House and Other Stories, Anna Katharine Green brings mystery into private homes, where families and servants live behind respectable surfaces. A crime draws suspicion toward a handful of people. Small details invite a closer look, and the calm of the household begins to feel uncertain.
These five tales make room for careful clues and the slow work of reasoning. Green, an early American voice in detective fiction, explores secrets, guilt, and family loyalty. The suspense grows from what people hide and what evidence reveals, asking you to weigh each detail rather than rush toward an answer.
What you’ll discover
- Quiet houses, hidden secrets Step into domestic worlds where familiar rooms hold uneasy families and things left unsaid.
- Clues worth your attention Follow small details that give you something concrete to question, weigh, and reconsider.
- Respectability under strain Look beneath outward appearances as secrets and guilt put family loyalty under pressure.
- The pleasure of reasoning Stay with a patient inquiry that reopens a crime others may consider closed.
- An early mystery voice Explore Green’s attention to evidence and tightly built puzzles from detective fiction’s early days.
Who will love it
Readers who love a good puzzle, a locked room, a secret motive or a narrator who learns too much too late, and who enjoy short tales with a sharp edge of suspense.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A ruined house hides an old man's story
- A graveyard oath binds Juliet
- A doctor is locked in a windowless room
- A night rider and a poisoned glass
- A letter in a Bible divides two friends
- Themes and the art of telling
Who’s who
- Philo AdamsA young villager who loves Juliet but becomes her loyal friend and writes down everything that happens around the unfinished stone house.
- Juliet PlayfairThe teasing village beauty who loves Orrin, yet is bound by an oath sworn on a grave to marry the Colonel.
- Orrin DayA fair-haired house builder with a fierce temper who loves Juliet and builds a cottage of his own for her.
- Colonel SchuylerThe proud, courteous great man of the district who builds a grand stone house for Juliet and means to keep her.
- Dick AtwaterA young New York doctor who rushes to catch a steamer after Dora, his sweetheart, and finds himself locked in a room.
- Addie WilcoxA gentle, poor young typist whose medicine is poisoned twice and who has no known enemy.
- TaylorA cheerful bachelor about to marry Mrs. Walworth, who expects perfection and cannot bear a hint of doubt.
- HuntleyA lawyer and man of the world who tells Taylor a story about a stolen letter and then wonders what he has done.
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- Large print hardcover
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25 languages, side by side
La vecchia casa di pietra e altri racconti in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
La vecchia casa di pietra e altri racconti
by Anna Katharine Green · 1891
A half-built stone house rots at the edge of a village, and an old man's yellow manuscript tells why.
Medium level2–5 hours to read25 languages
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In short
A house with ten windows and only two frames. A man locked in a room with wine and a pistol.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A ruined house hides an old man's story
A traveler on horseback finds an unfinished stone house in the woods of New York State. Its front has ten large windows, but only two ever received frames.
At the village inn, the landlady's ninety-year-old father cries out that he was there on the night it happened. He fetches a yellow manuscript, and the traveler reads the diary of young Philo Adams.
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What is The Old Stone House and Other Stories about?
It is a collection of five short mystery tales by Anna Katharine Green. They include an abandoned house and a village love triangle, a man locked in a room for a night, a Ku-Klux raid, a poisoned glass and a stolen letter.
What are the five stories in the book?
The stories are The Old Stone House, A Memorable Night, The Black Cross, A Mysterious Case and Shall He Marry Her. Each stands on its own and can be read in any order, though the title story comes first.
Who is Colonel Schuyler in The Old Stone House?
Colonel Schuyler is the proud and wealthy man whom the village admires most. He courts Juliet Playfair and builds a grand stone house for her, and his calm courtesy hides feelings that Philo cannot read.
The author
Anna Katharine Green
1846–1935 · American detective novelist
Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935) was an American novelist born in Brooklyn, New York. She wrote detective fiction, including The Leavenworth Case, published in 1878, and That Affair Next Door, published in 1897. She married actor and furniture designer Charles Rohlfs in 1884. She lived in Buffalo, New York, where she died.
More by Anna Katharine Green
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