Mary Lee Settle Collection
6 total works
Set in 1936, The Clam Shell continues the mesmerizing story Settle began in The Love Eaters.
In this narrative of doomed love, Mary Lee Settle tells of a triangular affair set in the small town of Canona, West Virginia, revealing the mores of Canona's closed, upper-class society and of its less prosperous underculture.
Settle has done a remarkable job of capturing the culture that is, in a sense, the most important character in her book. -- New York Times
Chronicles the love story of a widowed American anthropologist and a Scottish geologist as well as the intertwining tales of the couple's eccentric circle of friends.
After being rejected by the American armed forces for poor eyesight, Mary Lee Settle volunteered for service in the women's auxiliary arm of the Royal Air Force in 1942. She was a lone young American in a barracks full of English women. All the Brave Promises is her recollection and evocation of those war years.
The novel that launched Settle's outstanding career, The Love Eaters is an acid satire of bedroom and community tragedy. A wealthy, small-town theatrical group finds itself at the direction of a wheelchair-bound man whose designs extend beyond the stage. As he begins to lose control, so do his players, revealing appetites they scarcely knew that had. The Kiss of Kin, Settle's second and highly acclaimed novel, centers on the funeral, and last testament of Anna Mary Passmore. Drawn back to the Soutern homeplace, members of the Passmore clan-all of whom nurse visions that the matriarch's bequests will solve their problems-grapple with the various ties that bind them and with the disturbing appearance of an unexpected heir. Pulbished together for the first time, these novels offer compelling tales as well as a sample of Settle's early writing.