Tender and bittersweet, these stories by Truman Capote,

the author of Breakfast at Tiffany's,
are a captivating tribute to the Christmas season

''We set about choosing a tree. "It should be," muses my friend, "twice as tall as a boy. So a boy can't steal the star."''

Selected from across Truman Capote's writing life, these Christmas stories range from nostalgic, semi-autobiographical portraits of childhood to more unsettling tales of darkness beneath the festive glitter. In the Deep South of Capote's youth, a young boy, Buddy, and his beloved maiden 'aunt' Sook forage for pecans and whiskey to bake into fruitcakes, make kites — too broke to buy gifts — and rise before dawn to prepare feasts for a ragged assembly of guests; while in other stories, a lonely woman has a troubling encounter in wintry New York and an unlikely festive miracle, of sorts, occurs at a local drugstore.

Brimming with feeling, these sparkling tales convey both the wonder and the chill of Christmas time.