The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories by Edited by Jessica Harrison

Truman Capote makes whiskysoaked fruitcake in Alabama Laurie Lee slides across a frozen pond in Gloucestershire and Shirley Jackson is outwitted by a wily Santa Claus at the bank. Ghosts haunt the Christmases of Muriel Spark and Elizabeth Bowen while Dostoyevsky Daphne du Maurier and Italo Calvino take a cynical view of the season and Selma Lagerlof and Angela Carter celebrate its miracles. Ranging from Cork to Lagos to the Wild West and from Paris to San Paolo to outer space this is Christmas Hardback