I love getting deliveries from America. It's a little bit like Christmas each time. Even though we ordered the books, we're never quite sure what's going to come out of the box, mainly because the American editions look so different from our own - they even have a different texture. (Smell the same, though.) Today amongst other things we got two lovely first edition David Mitchells, a clutch of different novels with quite similar sage green covers (sage green is obviously big in US publishing at the moment), and two William Maxwell-related titles: one collection of essays about him, and one short story collection by Zona Gale. Who she, you cry. Until last week I didn't know either. She - alongside her intellectual contemporaries Edith Wharton and Willa Cather - was a strong influence on William Maxwell's writing, and hugely successful in her own 1920s heyday, only to be, as with so many others, completely forgotten now. I find her particularly intriguing as she was a proto-feminist writer who adapted some of her own work, including "Miss Lulu Bett" - the title story of this particular collection - into screenplays for silent movies. "Incomparable", says a quote on the cover. "Without flaw" reads another. I don't need more convincing to have a peruse. And so can you - watch out for its (yes) sage green appearance on C&P's selections table.