When the beautiful, imperious and moneyed Grace Caldwell Tate wants something she goes after it. Her affair scandalises Pennsylvania's elite and she must face the costs to her marriage and the man she really loves.

Julian English is part of the social elite of his 1930s American hometown but from the moment he impetuously throws a cocktail in the face of one of his powerful business associates his life begins to spiral out of control - taking his loving but troubled marriage with it. This is a blackly comic depiction of the fall of Julian English.

This particular morning, Gloria finds herself alone in a stranger's apartment with nothing but a torn evening dress and her stockings and panties. When she takes a fur coat from the wardrobe to wear home, she sets in train a series of events that will lead to tragedy.

These are refreshingly frank, sparely written stories that expose the world of bartenders and b-girls, car washers and criminals. John O'Hara dissects the subtleties that bind humans together and the pressures that separate them.

O'Hara was American fiction's greatest eavesdropper, recording the everyday speech and tone of all strata of mid-century society' Wall Street JournalJohn O'Hara remains the great chronicler of American society, and nowhere are his powers more evident than in his portraits of New York's so-called Golden Age.