Available for the first time in a single volume are the three holiday stories that Truman Capote regarded as among his greatest works of short fiction. Two of these childhood memoirs - "A Christmas Memory" and "The Thanksgiving Visitor" - center on the author's early years with a family of distant relatives in rural Alabama. Both pay loving tribute to an eccentric old-maid cousin, Miss Sook Faulk, who became his best friend.

In "A Christmas Memory," Miss Sook, Buddy (the narrator), and their dog, Queenie, celebrate the yuletide in a hilariously tipsy state. In the poignant reminiscence "One Christmas," six-year-old Buddy journeys to New Orleans for a reunion with his estranged father that shatters many illusions. And in "The Thanksgiving Visitor," Miss Sook invites the school bully, Odd Henderson - called by Buddy "the meanest human creature in my experience" - to Thanksgiving dinner.