Contains three short novels, -- Old Mortality, a story of race tracks, of the Deep South, of the survival and shattering of a family legend; Noon Wine, Texas and a dairy farm rescued from decay by a man who turns out to be an escaped lunatic from Dakota and of the tragedy that ended it all; Pale Horse, Pale Rider, a mystical story of the narrow ledge between life and death, set at the time of the flu epidemic. --Kirkus Reviews.

The classic 1939 collection of 3 novellas by the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning author and journalist, including the famous title story set during the influenza epidemic of 1918 In Noon Wine? a family struggling to live on a farm in Texas is saved by the unexpected arrival of a mysterious stranger—only to have their world upended again by the arrival, nine years later, of a second stranger. The three parts of Old Mortality introduce the teenager Miranda and chronicle her journey of self-discovery, as she gradually realizes her family’s romantic nostalgia for her absent uncle and late aunt bears little resemblance to the truth. Miranda returns in the title story, Pale Horse, Pale Rider. She is now working as a drama critic for a newspaper in Denver, where she falls in love with a soldier, Adam, during the influenza epidemic of 1918. When Miranda falls ill, Adam cares for her until she is moved to a hospital. Throughout her ordeal, on everyone’s mind is “the war, the war, the WAR to end WAR, war for Democracy, for humanity, a safe world forever and ever.” Available in this exclusive Library of America e-book edition

Texas-born in 1890, Katherine Anne Porter was a master of the short novel or long story, as she preferred to call her pieces, eschewing the term novella. Here are three short novels--"Noon Wine", "Old Mortality", and "Pale Horse, Pale Rider"--considered among the most beautifully wrought narratives in American fiction.