Here are eight stories from master American writers of the nineteenth century. They vary from sinister tales by Ambrose Bierce - why is that window boarded up? - and a reflective moment in the life of a woman without children, forced to look after children, to classic short stories by O. Henry and Stephen Crane. There is even an elegiac description of an eclipse by James Fenimore Cooper, author of The Last of the Mohicans. Read with sensitivity and skill by Garrick Hagon and Liza Ross.
This volume contains twenty of O. Henry's finest short stories, including "The Gift of the Magi," "The Ransom of Red Chief," and "The Making of a New Yorker."
O. Henry wove together several stories into this highly episodic narrative. Set in the fictional country of Coralio in Central America, a banana republic where larceny is rampant and revolution lurks in every impoverished back alley, this novel offers cutting satire of contemporary politics and prejudices. Yet, in the end, lovers are reunited, poverty obliterated, and sentiment satisfied.
In "Elsie in New York," Elsie is an innocent young woman who must look for work to make a living. Although she applies for several positions, do-gooders interfere. Thinking they are saving her soul, in actuality they point her to her destruction. In "The Purple Dress," two young women clerks have been saving money all year to buy new dresses for the one gala of their year, the annual Thanksgiving dinner given by their employer. But when a landlady and a dressmaker intervene, things turn out much differently than either girl could have imagined.
