With a new Introduction by Professor Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D.

This selection of a hundred of O. Henry's succinct tales displays the range, humour and humanity of a perennially popular short-story writer.

Here Henry gives a richly colourful and exuberantly entertaining panorama of social life, ranging from thieves to tycoons, from the streets of New York to the prairies of Texas.

These stories are famed for their 'trick endings' or 'twists in the tail' repeatedly the plot twirls adroitly, compounding ironies. Indeed, O. Henry's cunning plots surpass...