This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. The story of Frank Norris's The Pit could be taken from today's headlines: a businessman begins speculating in the commodities market on a small scale until, overcome by greed, addicted to the art of the deal, and harboring an ever-increasing appetite for power, he gambles recklessly in the market while the fortunes of farmers and small investors hang in the balance....

Set in San Francisco, Vandover is the story of a rich young man who desires to become a great artist but lacks the ambition to do so. Suicide, death, gambling, and a lost fortune swirl around the young man, reducing him to menial work in the very slums he once owned. Vandover is an early example of American literary naturalism.

Moran of the Lady Letty' is an adventure novel written by Frank Morris. It is a story that contains a battle, at least one murder, and several sudden deaths. For that reason it begins with a pink tea and among the mingled odors of many delicate perfumes and the hale, frank smell of Caroline Testout roses. There had been a great number of debutantes "coming out" that season in San Francisco by means of afternoon teas, pink, lavender, and otherwise....

First published in 1899, this graphic depiction of urban American life centers around McTeague, a dentist practicing in San Francisco at the turn of the century. While at first content with his life and friendship with an ambitious man named Marcus, McTeague eventually courts and marries Trina, a parsimonious young woman who wins a large sum of money in a lottery. The greed of the majority of the characters in the novel creates a chain of events that...