Return to a different time, where the streets are made of cobblestones, the cars are carriages driven by horses, and women lift their long, brightly colored skirts to step over muddy curbstones. In this bygone era, New York City is an old-fashioned kaleidoscope of impressions, of hues and tones, of gramophone music faintly heard from an open brownstone window.
This is a part of the world O. Henry creates in his stories, a world of a bustling, cosmopolitan Manhattan a century ago. In this world, you will discover an enduring romance in "The Gifts of the Magi," the hopes and dreams of hardworking department store clerks in "The Trimmed Lamp," the fairy tale adventures of a poor city girl in "The Enchanted Profile," and much more, from one of the greatest American short story writers that ever lived.
Travel now past the cities, to an America of sprawling trees, grassy meadows, and hills as far as the eye can see. Perhaps it is night. The campfire is lit just so. The red flames twirl, orange, red, and blue. The trees are only shadows, but they whisper in the wind, in the pure, sweet air of the countryside, in an America unmarred by telephone poles, malls, or industrial parks.
This is another side to O. Henry's world: the rural South and the wild West. Here you will meet a fierce bandito, the Cisco Kid. You will find diabolical adventure in "The Dissipated Jeweler" and a scam that would make even Butch Cassidy envious. You will laugh out loud at the antics in the rustic hideaway described in "The Ransom of Red Chief." And you will always remember the surprising adventure of the renegade Llano Kid in "A Double-Dyed Deceiver."
Imagine this long-ago innocence of the countryside combined with the sophistication of turn-of-the-century New York. Add a working-class family, perhaps, or a rich, pompous gentleman, or a furious child, or, most definitely, a heart-wrenching romance, and you have some of the magic that makes up O. Henry's world.
Country and city, rich and poor, goodness and greed–all live together in the extraordinary human comedy of an O. Henry story, and all come together in a compelling surprise twist that comes at the end. In the dozens of stories in this exciting collection, these surprises await you–as well as an enchanting glimpse of a world long past, but not, thanks to the genius of O. Henry, ever forgotten.