The Complete Stories (Modern Library)

Most readers know Truman Capote as the author of Breakfast at Tiffanys and In Cold Blood; or they remember his notorious social life and wild and witty public appearances. But he was also the author of superb short tales that were as elegant as they were heartfelt, as grotesque as they were compassionate. Now, on the occasion of what would have been his eightieth birthday, the Modern Library presents the first collection that includes all of Capotes short fiction-a volume that confirms his status as one of the masters of this form.

Among the selections are “A Tree of Night,” in which an innocent student, sitting on a train beside a slatternly woman and her deaf-mute companion, enters a seductive nightmare that brings back the deepest fears of childhood . . . “House of Flowers,” the inspiration for a celebrated Broadway musical, which tells of a superstitious prostitute who learns to love in a way no one else can ever understand . . . the holiday perennial “A Christmas Memory,” famously adapted into a superb made-for-TV movie . . . and “The Bargain,” Capotes melancholy, never-before-published 1950 story about a suburban housewifes shifting fortunes.

From the gothic South to the chic East Coast, from rural children to aging urban sophisticates, all the unforgettable places and people of Capotes oeuvre are captured in this first-ever compendium. The Collected Stories of Truman Capote should restore its author to a place above mere celebrity, to the highest levels of American letters.

TRUMAN CAPOTE was born in New Orleans on September 30, 1924. In 1948 his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, was published to international critical acclaim, assuring Capote a place among the prominent postwar American writers. He won the O. Henry Memorial Short Story Prize twice and was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. His other works include Breakfast at Tiffanys, The Grass Harp, and the nonfiction masterpiece In Cold Blood. He died on August 25, 1984.

REYNOLDS PRICE is the James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University and the distinguished author of more than twenty-five books of fiction, poetry, drama, and essays. He lives in North Carolina.