15 minSummaryRead it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook editionPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 124 pagesHardcover · 6 × 9 in · 124 pagesAbout 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
This book suits readers who love old-fashioned mysteries with a clear voice, a puzzle at the center and a mood of dread. If you enjoy tales of jealousy, secrets and clever detection, it is made for you.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A witness leaves the mystery on paper
- A marriage promise binds the house
- A generous gift deepens the unease
- Polite company becomes a prison
- A night rider begins to question
- A doctor watches instead of guessing
- Suspicion casts a shadow over marriage
- Small objects carry questions of judgment
Who’s who
- Philo AdamsA young villager with a cottage and an apple tree who loves Juliet, becomes her friend and writes the tale down.
- Juliet PlayfairThe prettiest girl in the village, playful and changeable, promised to one man while her heart belongs to another.
- Colonel Richard SchuylerA dark, proud and wealthy man who builds a great stone house for Juliet and watches over her closely.
- Orrin DayA fair-haired house builder with a fiery temper who loves Juliet and builds a rival cottage far to the east.
- Dick AtwaterA young New York doctor who is trapped in a locked room on the night before the woman he loves sails.
- DoraThe woman Dick loves, quarreled with him and about to sail for Europe, with a rival on the same ship.
- TaylorA cheerful club man about to marry a widow, whose faith in her is shaken a week before the wedding.
- Mrs. WalworthA charming young widow engaged to Taylor who is one of three women to enter a hotel parlor.
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The Old Stone House and Other Stories 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.
The Old Stone House and Other Stories
by Anna Katharine Green · 1891
A doctor is locked in a windowless room by a smiling stranger who offers wine and cigars until dawn.
Medium level2–5 hours to read20 languages
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“I am a young physician with a small practice and great ambition.”
In short
Picture a rider on an autumn road who comes on an old stone house at the edge of a forest. It has ten large windows, but only two ever received frames.
The Old Stone House and Other Stories at a glance
- Reading time
- About 2 h 30 min2 h fast, 3 h slow
- Length
- 36,000 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1891by Anna Katharine Green
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
An old man's manuscript opens the mystery
The first story begins with a rider on a quiet road in New York State. He stops before a stone house at the edge of a forest. Only two of its ten large windows ever received frames. Upstairs, something grips his arm in the dark, and he finds it is only a twig grown through the window.
At the inn he asks the landlady why the house has stood empty so long. She glances at her father, a man of ninety, and says that talk of the house excites him too much. The old man will not be silenced. He fetches a roll of yellow paper, a record he wrote when the events happened, fifty years earlier. He presses it into the stranger's hand with a sly wink.
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A doctor is locked in a windowless room by a smiling stranger who offers wine and cigars until dawn.
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Details
- First published
- 1891
- Language
- English
- Level
- Medium level
- Paperback
- 124 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Hardcover
- 124 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Large print paperback
- 196 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Large print hardcover
- 196 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Delivery and returns
- Printed when you order. Usually here in 12 to 14 days.Arrives Tue 1 Dec to Mon 7 Decto United States, printed for you at cost
For Christmas, order by Thu 12 Nov
Cite this edition
Green, Anna Katharine. The Old Stone House and Other Stories. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-old-stone-house-and-other-stories.
Green, A. K. (2026). The old stone house and other stories. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-old-stone-house-and-other-stories (Original work published 1891)
Green, Anna Katharine. The Old Stone House and Other Stories. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-old-stone-house-and-other-stories.
@book{green2026old,
author = {Green, Anna Katharine},
title = {The Old Stone House and Other Stories},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-old-stone-house-and-other-stories},
note = {First published 1891}
}
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What is The Old Stone House and Other Stories about?
It gathers five short tales of mystery and suspense. They include a village love triangle around an unfinished stone house, a doctor held in a locked room, a night raid, a poisoning in a boardinghouse and a lawyer's dilemma.
Who is Colonel Schuyler in The Old Stone House?
He is a proud, wealthy man and the great figure of the county. He courts Juliet Playfair and builds a grand stone house in the woods for her, and he claims her oath on a churchyard grave.
Who wrote this book and when?
Anna Katharine Green wrote it. She was an American author who worked in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and is known as an early master of the detective story. She died in 1935.
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.
“I am a young physician with a small practice and great ambition.”
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