Best Selling Books by Mary Chase

THE STORY: As told by Kerr, all happens very logically. A little girl has slipped past the gatekeeper and over the garden wall to play with a lonely and put-upon lad. She is quickly shooed out by his mother as ''trash.'' It just so happens that the

The main people (according to Chapman) “are seven or eight youths who might be called nice Dead End kids. These lads love practical jokes, hang out in a beer parlor in a Western town, and talk endlessly about females and their conquests over same. But they are sham hoodlums; they are good kids from good families trying to grow up. Their leader is a fascinating young man nicknamed Beau, who has a crazy twinkle in his eye and a supple imagination. When things grow dull with his companions, he cheers them up with tales of the ideal town, where the boys stay downstairs and send their parents up to bed. In his [ideal] town, Sneaky Falls, Idaho…it is the mothers who enlist in the Navy and their sons run around like crazy mailing them packages of cookies. This chap Beau…has invented for the gang the ideal female. She is slinky, sexy and willing, being from Sneaky Falls, where only one word is spoken. The word is ''Yes.'' The girl’s name is Bernardine…The only really unhappy member of the crowd is a character named Wormy. Wormy wants to be a big wheel, a conquering male, the way the others say they are—but somehow he can’t make it. His attempts at playing wolf never succeed, and none of the girls in the town will date him. His mother’s watchful affection bores and irks him. In one great, desperate effort to become important in the eyes of his companions, he hangs out in a hotel lobby and makes passes until he succeeds with an older woman who must be at least in her twenties, maybe thirties. Wormy’s adventure is agonizing and funny."

THE STORY: To Mademoiselle Barbizon (formerly Barschberger), people run a poor second to poodles and in her manor-like Versailles Kennels she has spared no expense in seeing to it that her prize charges are given the best of everything. They are al

THE STORY: The main people (according to Chapman) are seven or eight youths who might be called nice Dead End kids. These lads love practical jokes, hang out in a beer parlor in a Western town, and talk endlessly about females and their conquests

THE STORY: Mrs. Edwin Gilroy (Midgie) Purvis is a rich, fashionable and middle-aged member of society. She is also given to cutting unexpected, and sometimes eyebrow-raising capers. Her rather stuffy son, Canfield (who is about to be married), has

Imagine how shocked you would be if, like ten-year-old Colin Mason, you were the oldest (smartest, best) kid in a family of four, and then you found out that all these years, without knowing it, you’ve had an older sister, an “awful, awful, bad, bad, girl—Loretta Mason Potts.” Who? What? Wait! ... But this is only the first of many surprises that lie in store for Colin, as things get curiouser and curiouser very fast. Loretta (a glum gangly girl and so very very rude!) comes home and before you know it, Colin is secretly following her down a hidden tunnel that leads from a bedroom closet to an astonishing castle, where a charming and beautiful countess keeps court attended by a dapper and ever-obliging general, and in this world everybody loves Loretta (especially when she’s rude), so much so that they’re begging her to stay with them forever. What is the secret behind this mysterious other world and how does it connect to the many secrets in the Mason family? It’ll take a spellbinding, hair-raising adventure, involving not just Colin and Loretta but their mother and the rest of the family, to work that out.

Maureen Swanson is the scourge of the neighborhood. At age nine, she already has a reputation as a hard slapper, a loud laugher, a liar, and a stay-after-schooler. The other kids call her Stinky. So sometimes when Maureen passes the crumbling (and haunted?) Messerman mansion, she imagines that she is Maureen Messerman–rich, privileged, and powerful. Then she finds a way into the forbidden, boarded-up house. In the hall are portraits of seven young women wearing elaborate gowns and haughty expressions. Maureen has something scathing to say to each one, but then she notices that the figures seem to have shifted in their frames. So she reaches out her finger to touch the paint–just to make sure–and touches . . . silk! These seven daughters of privilege are colder and meaner than Maureen ever thought to be. They are wicked, wicked ladies, and Maureen has something they want. . . .

Linda and Julie, two twelve year olds, delight in calling strangers on the phone and then terrifying them by breathing heavily and chewing ice cubes in their ears. One of their victims is Vivian Lucas, a very nice lady who quickly catches on to what they are up to and, having done the same sort of thing when she was a girl, invites Linda to lunch at the Clermont Hotel. But then they call the La Strange Tattoo Parlor, where the reaction is quite different. Madam La Strange is furious and, abetted by her ugly son Heinrich, vows to catch Linda and tattoo her forehead. Discovering Linda''s plan to meet Mrs. Lucas for lunch, Madam and Heinrich arrive at the hotel first and explain to Linda that Mrs. Lucas has asked them to drive her to the Lucas home--whereupon they all repair to the tattoo parlor. Luckily Linda''s friends, having uncovered the plot, make their own crank call to Madam La Strange, Linda slips away in the confusion, and all agree, with a pronounced sigh of relief, that the "fun" phone calls are over for good!

This book was written by Mary Mills Lyall in collaboration with her architect husband Earl Harvey Lyall, who also illustrated it. "The Cubies'' ABC" is a delightful and humorous satirical alphabet book that makes fun of Cubists while pretending to be a kid''s book. Three unidentified individuals are called The Cubies. Each has green hair and is one of three different colors: blue, mustard, and magenta. Instead of using cubes to build them, Earl Lyall used pyramids. They frequently feature jack-o''-lantern-like leering grins, have red triangle eyes and mouths, and have triangular shapes. They frequently scowl and come out as purposefully dim-witted. They swoon over anything Cubist and mock objectivity throughout the entire book.

Together their stories offer an intimate portrait of an American family caught up in the sweep of a century of change.