The Law-Breakers and Other Stories

A sharp collection of late Victorian short fiction that dissects the gap between public righteousness and private compromise. At its center stands George Colfax, a self-styled reformer who decries political corruption while navigating his own complicated relationship with Mary Wellington, a woman who sees clearly what he cannot: the distance between his moral pronouncements and his actual integrity. The title story introduces Jim Daly, a twice-elected political figure whose jail time for impersonating a civil-service candidate has only strengthened his popular appeal, forcing Colfax to confront uncomfortable truths about reform, popularity, and the elastic nature of American ethics. Grant writes with dry precision about the rituals of respectable society and the secrets everyone keeps. These are stories about people who believe they are better than their choices, and the moments when that delusion becomes impossible to maintain. A fascinating period portrait of turn-of-the-century American moral anxiety, concerned with the same question that haunts us now: what happens when the people who claim to uphold standards are tested by their own desires?