Christmas Stories

by Diana Secker Tesdell (Editor)

Now joining Everyman’s Library—the most extensive and distinguished collectible library of the world’s greatest works—is an appealing new collection in a small Pocket Classics format, perfect for gift giving and reading pleasure.

Christmas Stories is a treasury of short fiction by great writers of the past two centuries—from Dickens and Tolstoy to John Updike and Alice Munro. As a literary subject, Christmas has inspired everything from intimate domestic dramas to fanciful flights of the imagination, and the full range of its expression is represented in this wonderfully engaging anthology.

Goblins frolic in the graveyard of an early Dickens tale and a love-struck ghost disrupts a country estate in Elizabeth Bowen’s “Green Holly.” The plight of the less fortunate haunts Chekhov’s “Vanka” and Willa Cather’s “The Burglar’s Christmas” but takes a boisterously comic turn in Damon Runyon’s “Dancing Dan’s Christmas” and in John Cheever’s “Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor.” From Vladimir Nabokov’s intensely moving story of a father’s grief in “Christmas” to Truman Capote’s hilarious yet heartbreaking “A Christmas Memory,” from Grace Paley’s Jewish girl starring in the Christmas pageant in “The Loudest Voice” to the dysfunctional family ski holiday in Richard Ford’s “Crèche”—each of the stories gathered here is imbued with Christmas spirit (of one kind or another), and all are richly and indelibly entertaining.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Charles Dickens
The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton
(from The Pickwick Papers)

Nikolai Gogol
The Night Before Christmas

Arthur Conan Doyle
The Blue Carbuncle

Anthony Trollope
Christmas at Thompson Hall

Leo Tolstoy
Where Love is, God is

Anton Checkhov
Vanka

Willa Cather
The Burglar's Christmas

O. Henry
A Chapparal Christmas Gift

Saki (H.H. Munro)
Reginald's Christmas Revel

Vladimir Nabokov
Christmas

Damon Runyon
Dancing Dan's Christmas

Evelyn Waugh
Bella Fleace Gave a Party

Elizabeth Bowen
Green Holly

John Cheever
Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor

Truman Capote
A Christmas Memory

John Updike
The Carol Sing

Muriel Spark
Christmas Fugue

Grace Paley
The Loudest Voice

Alice Munro
The Turkey Season

Richard Ford
Creche

Genres: Christmas, Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Anthologies, Holiday, Literary Fiction

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

The proverbial curate's egg....'Good in parts'. This was a collection of twenty short stories ranging from re-reading stories written by authors well known to me, touching down in previously unread stories by other authors with whom I am familiar and then coming to rest in fables written by people of whom i had never heard. The fascinating thing was some of these unknown writers, to me at least, gave me the most joy although thinking about it, joy might not be the right word. Some of these stories and I would, it seems, have a quite different understanding of the phrase 'season of good will'. Some of these stories were ones of heartbreak and lost love, of wasted opportunities and of failed hopes. Not the cheeriest of collections but fascinating just the same.

Just to mark out a few would be churlish...but what the hell i feel like being a churl so here goes.
Saki............oh come on, you can never go wrong with Saki. This was a short, understated first person account of a Christmas 'jape' not terribly well received by the rest of the party. Silly, off the wall and therefore perfect Saki.

There was a beautiful story by Nabokov of a grieving father reading his son's diary....'bittersweet' might have been a word coined for this tale.

Elizabeth Bowen and Muriel Spark give us ghost stories but from left of field. Bowen's reminded me a little of Flann O'Brien's 'The third policeman' and if you read her story, 'Green Holly', you would see what i mean. Spark's is fun and leaves you with an uncertain 'what the f**k happened there' type feeling and then my two lovely encounters were with Truman Capote who, although i have heard of him I have never read anything by him and Alice Munro.

Capote's was called 'A Christmas Memory' and was a truly heartbreaking account of a young lad and his friendship with his eccentric Aunt. In fact I had just looked at it again and the last paragraph still made me choke a little. Absolutely lovely and sad and real. Extraordinary .

Munro's was called 'the Turkey Season' and I am still not quite sure what i liked about it. Nothing particularly happens and yet a good deal does. Its is a weird feeling that something and nothing you get when you encounter a story and it makes you want to know more and follow the characters as if you see them turning a corner instead of leaving the page.

One of the things i noticed about so many of the short stories here and indeed many others I have read concerning Christmas is that they are nostalgia based or at least adults looking back to an experience, not necessarily positive, undergone in childhood. I am not quite sure what this says but maybe it is another aspect of the ghost story phenomenon. Many of these accounts are not of actual ghosts but perhaps they still are of hauntings, those shady images or memories flitting around in the back of our minds remain ever possible of unnerving or indeed encouraging. Redemption comes, I suppose, when our past which is still alive in us can be transformed or at least looked at squarely and accepted.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ups and downs. A colorful start with Charles Dickens and a perfect finish with Richard Ford; wedged between these two, in chronological order, is a compelling variety of other household names; I discovered I can't stand Damon Runyon, which I guess is of some value.

Same series, same editor as Stories of the Sea, which I had read during summer and liked a little better.

[Melanie Garcia · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
3.5

Overall a lovely selection of festive stories for the Christmas period. Several stories were 5 star and a few were less enjoyable and therefore only 1 or 2.

I will say, some of these stories were a bit of a reach to include in a Christmas Stories selection, although well written they were hardly festive at all.

I'm very happy to have discovered some new authors though! Trollope, Saki, Nabakov, Waugh and Capote all stand out to me and I can't wait to read more by them.

The ones I enjoyed least were O Henry, Runyon, Bowen, Paley and worst of all Richard Ford.

[Vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

My initial plan was to read this collection on the week coming up to Christmas and on Christmas Day/Boxing Day, but I ended up reading most of it in the last two days of the year. Oh well!

I do love a good Everyman Short Story collection, and this one was just as unusual as some of the others I've read. The spread of authors is good from here: you have everyone from Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope to Alice Munro and John Cheever, so a great selection. However, as with any short story collections that contains stories from multiple authors of varying styles, my enjoyment of the selected stories was mixed.

My favourites in this collection for sure were The Blue Carbunkle by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Burglar's Christmas by Willa Cather, A Chapparal Christmas Gift by O. Henry, Christmas Fugue by Muriel Spark, and The Turkey Season by Alice Munro. There were a couple of stories in here that I really really disliked, namely the ones by Nikolai Gogol, Leo Tolstoy (sorry Russian authors!), and Elizabeth Bowen. And then there were some that were just middling.

My main issue with this collection though was that a lot of the stories I felt had an INCREDIBLY tenuous link to Christmas in general. However, that made it a little bit easier to read the collection after the holidays had ended, so all in all it wasn't too bad! Overall, not my favourite collection from Everyman, but worth checking out if you like Christmas-themed story collections.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was similarly disappointed with this like I was Cat Stories by this publisher, though slightly less so this time. Christmas at Thompson Hall was my favorite short story. There were 3 or 4 short stories I didn't like because they didn't capture the Christmas spirit well and were too depressing. I also really liked the stories by Vladimir Nabokov and Saki and want to read more by them. I wanted this collection to get me in the Christmas spirit and explore the good things about Christmas. But this is a collection of short stories by famous authors that have something to do with Christmas or snowy winters. I won't be trying anymore of these anthologies.

[Justin Pickett · Rating 4 out of 5]

“She had a one-way air ticket … precisely on Christmas day.” (p. 317)

I imagine many of the low ratings this story collection has received reflect disappointment from readers who were expecting uplifting, celebratory tales. Although there are some such stories in it, the collection is broader, considering Christmas not only from the perspective of characters who enjoy the holiday, but also from the viewpoint of people who are saddened by it or who see it as just something happening in the midst of other more significant life events.

“She is very patient (with assholes), very ready to forgive (assholes), very good to help behind the scenes (with assholes).” (p. 362)

Altogether, I thought the stories in the collection were very good. Of course, I disliked a few of them (e.g., those by Gogol, Munro, and Ford). But most were humous, heartrending, uplifting, and/or insightful. I particularly liked the stories by Muriel Spark, Willa Cather, Vladimir Nabokov, John Cheever, Anthony Trollope, and Evelyn Waugh. The Dickens tale (or excerpt) was also good, despite being similar in its theme to A Christmas Carol.

“Above all, he saw that men like himself, who snarled at the mirth and cheerfulness of others, were the foulest weeds on the fair surface of the earth; and setting all the good of the world against the evil, he came to the conclusion that it was a very decent respectable world after all.” (p. 22)

OTHER MEMORABLE QUOTES:

“If he could do a job by the day required, he undertook it; if not, he told the truth and gave no false promises; so he was well known and never short of work.” (p. 163)

“It is a tragic hour, that hour when we are finally driven to reckon with ourselves, when every avenue of mental distraction has been cut off and our own life and all its ineffaceable failures closes about us like the walls of that old torture chamber of the Inquisition.” (pp. 190-191)

“There is nothing more maddening than to have morally consented to crime and then lack the nerve force to carry it out.” (p. 194)

[Diane Barnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not usually a Christmas story reader as such, other than Capote's "A Christmas Memory", and it's next to impossible to avoid Dickens classic at this time of year. But I couldn't resist this little pocket classic when I saw it at a library sale. It seemed to call me this season, so I settled in for a read. Everyone is here, all the greats: Dickens (with a goblin tale on Christmas Eve instead of Ebenezer Scrooge), Nabokov, Trollope, with a hilarious story of mistaken identity, Alice Munro, who can't seem to write a bad short story, and many others, all with Christmas themes smart, sad, funny, but no sappy Hallmark treatments. For me, this is a good time of year for short stories, what with all the running around shopping, entertaining, cooking, extra hours at work. Time to read is at a premium, and concentration is hard to come by, so quality stories by quality writers is a valuable book. Very enjoyable.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful little collection of Christmas stories in a beautiful package. There are British, Russian, and American stories. There are stories with spirit and stories with spirits. There are sad stories, bittersweet stories, and quite funny stories. There are stories from Dickens and Evelyn Waugh, and Alice Munro.

A great way to spend Christmas Day while drinking tea and listening to Christmas carols.

[Walt · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you desire a well-rounded Christmas read, this collection fits the bill. It features Dickens' "The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton," that reads like a run-up to "A Christmas Carol"; Gogol's "The Night before Christmas"; Sherlock Holmes's "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle"; Trollope's "Christmas at Thompson Hall"; and many, many others, twenty in all, including of more modern time, Alice Munro's "The Turkey Season".

My favorites among the stories were Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" and Nabakov's "Christmas" for serious Christmas themes and, for fun and a good laugh, "Christmas at Thompson Hall"And John Cheever's "Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor".

While many of these stories are in the public domain, the book's cover is probably worth the price of purchase.

These stories are more than capable of confirming your Christmas goodwill, Christmas frivolity, Christmas anxiety, and give you a Christmas broken heart. You might want to check it out.

[Mariangel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good variety of Christmas themed stories by XIX and XX century authors.

My two favorites were those by Tolstoy and Nabokov.

I also enjoyed the ones by Dickens (from the Pickwick Papers), Gogol, Trollope, Chekhov, Willa Cather, O. Henry, Runyon and Cheever. There is a Sherlock Holmes story too, which of course I had read already.

Those by Saki, Waugh, Bowen, Capote and Updike were not bad, but I liked them less than the previous. Finally, I did not like the last four stories by late XX century authors.

[Chrystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection of 20 stories for the eclectic reader. At 400 pages, this well-rounded volume will entertain the reader for the whole Christmas season. The stories are arranged chronologically by publication date, beginning with Charles Dickens and ending with Richard Ford.

Here we have ghost stories by Dickens and Elizabeth Bowen, comic ones by Saki and Trollope, poignant tales from Nabokov and Capote, ironic ones by Cheever and Grace Paley. And a very clever addition to the company is a Sherlock Holmes mystery where the Christmas goose swallows The Blue Carbuncle.

Favorites? I loved Trollope's "Christmas at Thompson Hall," a hilarious tale of mistaken identity. Tolstoy's "Where Love is, God Is" was a particularly inspiring and beautiful tale. Nabokov's "Christmas" was a gem of a story, very sad. Capote's "A Christmas Memory" has always been a personal favorite of mine, never failing to touch me.

Three stories which impressed me technically as superb specimens of the genre were Waugh's "Bella Fleece Gave a Party," Cheever's "Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor," and Paley's "The Loudest Voice."

[Amy in the Desert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dull selection of stories

[Niamh O · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love these gorgeous editions and intend to get more. A little Christmas gift from me to myself which I really enjoyed reading it over the holiday.

Loved: Dickens, Nabokov, Capote, Updike.
The Waugh, Chekhov and Munro were quite sad, the Trollope, Conan Doyle and Saki were light and entertaining. Tolstoy was a little boring, the Gogol was incredibly boring, far too long and I found it a bit twee. Bowen was...weird, and I didn't like the Richard Ford at all though it was well-written, as I found the male-gaze came through perplexingly strongly in a story supposedly told from a female protagonist"s POV.

All in all, there were more highlights than lowlights for me, though, so I'm giving it 4 stars.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

At this time of year I naturally turn to Christmas-themed books and stories, and this wonderful collection is a perfect choice.

CHRISTMAS STORIES is a treasury of short fiction by great writers of the last two centuries presented chronologically, featuring the works of Chekhov, Dickens and Tolstoy as well as those of such modern writers as Richard Ford, Alice Munro and John Updike.

From tales of goblins and ghosts to comedic turns by Damon Runyon and John Cheever, this is an ideal choice for the holiday season.

[Barbara Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anthologies are great - you dip in and out, you like some stories and are lukewarm about others, and that's ok. Would I rave about every word in this book? No.
Did I discover the unexpected, did I feel myself drawn into the lives of others, did I close the book cover with new, fresh and unusual images in my mind? Absolutely.
The book achieves what it set out to do!

[Alex Sarll]

Bought a couple of years back because it was so pretty (the back cover is still more so than the front, a naive yet perfectly evocative view of Father Christmas on snowy hills), then bumped because the Penguin book of same was even prettier, and texturally satisfying to boot. And yes, there is some overlap of contents, with that and other festive anthologies; some I read again (Reginald's Christmas Revel is so short it would be rude not to); others I did not, for reasons ranging from loving them but knowing them too well (The Blue Carbuncle, The Goblins Who Stole A Sexton) to having found them quite trying enough the first time (Turkey Season). As for Elizabeth Bowen's Green Holly... it's not that it's not good, it clearly is, but the more I read of Bowen, and of early twentieth century ghost stories, the less I understand why this particular example should have been chosen as the default representative of both in mainstream selections.

Because more than the Penguin volume, this is a firmly mainstream batch, for the independent bookshop window, reviewed in broadsheets value of the word. Crime and the supernatural are to be treated with the utmost caution, admitted only if they come from the most thoroughly respectable authors, and never mind the quality – hence fifty pages of Cossack farce from Gogol, hinging on an underachieving devil, which for all I know might be side-splitting in Russian but in English feels profoundly laboured. Much to be preferred is polite, plot-light realism in which someone has the mildest possible epiphany about the season and/or their own life. And yes, occasionally this can come off; John Cheever's Christmas Is A Sad Season For The Poor stays just the right side of trite, and it turns out I dislike Updike a lot less than I always assumed I would. Richard Ford, on the other hand, is exactly as exhausting an exemplar of extruded American literature as I'd feared. Across the Aleutians, Tolstoy's Where Love Is, God Is somehow manages to be even more cloying than its title, making the schmaltziest bits of Dickens look like Clive Barker in comparison. And as for Trollope... there's something almost remarkable about the way his elaborate circumlocutions and farcical set-ups prefigure Wodehouse, yet are always carefully damped down to ensure nothing so vulgar as a laugh ever emerges. It's writing to make one understand why people might despise the English.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm just going to revive my faltering festive spirit by looking at the covers again.

[Rachel Stevenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The two stand out surprises in this collection were Trollope’s tale of a couple determined to get back to England for Xmas, which was funny, absurd and touching; I had always assumed Trollope was eminently Victorian: Dickens with the humour surgically removed.

The other was Christmas by Nabokov, the story was nothing much but the descriptions were just lovely:
“The room floated in darkness; the dense blue of early evening filtered through the crystal feathers of frost on the windowpane.”
“The reflections of the many-coloured panes formed paradisal lozenges on the white-washed cushionless window seats.”

Other notable stories were the three of crime and redemption by Willa Cather, O. Henry, and Damon Runyon, set in Chicago, the wild west, and the even wilder New York speakeasy.

In Russia, Tolstoy and Chekov brought us a sentimental Christian story and a sad one, respectively.
In the 20th century, Muriel Spark and Elizabeth Bowen both provided ghost stories, Alice Munro turned the reader vegetarian, Grace Paley’s Jewish protagonist celebrated Christmas more than the Christians, and Saki visited relatives, with witty consequences.
 

[Katy · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a whole, the selection of stories were fair to middling for my taste. However, my favorites, Reginald's Christmas Revel by Saki, A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote and The Turkey Season by Alice Munro, were worth their weight in gold. The latter two were not terribly uplifting and not really what I'd seek as far as Christmas short stories, but I enjoyed them outside of that fact, and the Capote story actually brought tears to my eyes. I look forward to reading more works by these three authors, which made this collection worth reading if nothing else.

[Celia T]

I had this on hold at the library for ages and it only just came in so I read it belatedly. Whatever, Christmas isn't technically over until the 5th, right?

I'm not giving it a rating because it's a whole variety of very different short stories by very different writers and some of them I liked better than others, but overall this is a really good little selection. Also I forgot how much I enjoy Saki!!

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only a few of the stories actually felt Christmassy, as opposed to most of the others which only really had the word ‘Christmas’ in them and so automatically qualified for this collection. The best story was by Willa Cather called The Burglar’s Christmas. Otherwise it did not put me in a Christmas mood. 3⭐️

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

´The realization that he was in a position to give, that he could bring happiness easily to someone else, sobered him.´

A collection of Christmas short stories I’d meant to read for years. I have just come to accept I am not a fan of the short story. I tried. That said, Capote’s ‘A Christmas Memory’ and Tolstoy’s ´Where Love Is, God Is’ were highlights. 💚❤️

[Callum McLaughlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

My low rating for this doesn't necessarily reflect how much I enjoyed the stories that I actually liked in here. The trouble is that there are probably only about 5 stories I could say I properly liked, and out of 20, that's not a great ratio of success.

In fairness, it's an anthology rather than a collection, so I fully expected not to get on with every writer's style, themes, etc. However, my biggest problem is simply that I wouldn't class many of these as 'Christmas Stories' in the first place, and I don't think it's a coincidence that the ones I tended to enjoy most were the ones with the most significant tie-in to the season the book proclaimed to explore, but largely didn't.

Perhaps it's just me, but with a name and a cover like those on the front of this book, I expected most of the stories to be full of cosy settings, festive cheer, and the warm fuzzies. In reality, we get 20 stories that are mostly the complete opposite, most of which at best happen to be set near Christmastime, with one or two passing references to the day or season itself. The truth is that the vast majority of the stories in here could have been set at any time of the year and no details would have changed. As with Everyman's Ghost Stories anthology, I think therefore that the main issue I had with this book was that the editor played it a little too fast and loose with the concept they were given, and that the content simply wasn't what I was looking for from a festive read.

That said, it was worth picking up for the discovery of two authors I hadn't read before - Willa Cather and John Cheever - whose stories titled The Burglar's Christmas and Christmas is a Sad Time for the Poor, respectively, were easily the standouts for me. Cather's offering focussed on the unbreakable nature of a mother's love in wonderful prose, whilst Cheever's portrayed the idea that there's always someone worse off than yourself, no matter how bad things seem, and that the spirit of generosity inspired by Christmas should not be confined to the festive season. I'm intrigued to try more from both of them.

The other stories I enjoyed were Christmas by Vladimir Nabokov, Christmas Fugue by Muriel Spark, and Christmas at Thompson Hall by Anthony Trollope (though it did fizzle out a bit at the end).

So, whilst there are certainly gems to be found in here, it simply didn't deliver what I felt it promised overall, and as such, felt a little underwhelming.

[Matt Good · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this book after putting it down half-way through a few years ago (something to do with being too superstitious to read a book of Christmas stories after Christmas Day). Because the book is arranged chronologically, the stories I read this year are from the last one hundred years or so. A review of the first half reminded me of what stuck out then too...The Gogol story, my first, was long and fascinating. I will be reading more. A very bizarre Runyon story has gangsters speaking only in the present tense...even when talking about the past. Somehow I had lived this long without being exposed to Capote's "A Christmas Memory", which is phenomenal. Re-reading Cheever's "Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor" was a pleasure. And Alice Munro's "The Turkey Season" is incredible, if not particularly uplifting for a book of holiday stories. A great collection in a great series from Everyman's Library (sorry for the engendered language or my favorite editions of books). I received "London Stories" and "Stories of Fatherhood" for Christmas - I hope they're as well selected as these stories.

[Martha Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful selection of Christmas stories! I enjoyed all 20 of them, only 2 of which (Conan Doyle’s The Blue Carbuncle and Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory) I’d read before. Such fun to find here stories by authors such as O. Henry and Saki that I’d never seen before. A nice variety of stories as well, some moving (Tolstoy’s Where Love Is, God Is, Alice Munro’s The Turkey Season) and some quite humorous (Trollope’s Christmas at Thompson Hall, Cheever’s Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor).
I recommend this book for a cozy read, wrapped up by your fire with a warm drink at hand, this holiday season!

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really nice collection of Christmas-themed stories, with a strong variety from a bit of treacle (not much, though) to moving to funny, to thought-provoking.

[Hattie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A stellar cast of authors, ranging from Dickens and Chekhov to Truman Capote and Alice Munro. My favorite story is, by no surprise, Saki's "Reginald's Christmas Revel"

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory was my favourite story here, by a country mile.

[Colby Mcmurry · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars; this book is a mixed bag like any other short story collection, but one that largely succeeds. The collection ranges from 19th century writers like Dickens and Gogol to writers of the modern day like Updike and Munro. The subject matter varies from the supernatural to the spiritual and even to a story set in a turkey barn. I will say that the first half of the collection is more consistently better quality than the latter half in my opinion, but more modern writers like Truman Capote keep the collection going even though the final two stories are a little overly long and fall a little flat in my opinion.

Ultimately, this collection is a pretty good way of getting into the Christmas spirit from a variety of authors with various insights into the season, its traditions, and Christmas' impact on us.

[Callie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trigger Warning: There is a Victorian running around with mustard in her palm (Anthony Trollope's Christmas at Thompson Hall).

Some stories were quite enjoyable, mainly Evelyn Waugh, John Cheever & Richard Ford. Leo Tolstoy and Willa Cather. Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory continues to be one of the best holiday short stories in the modern era.

Personally, I'm tired of all these contemporary Christmas collections featuring only cynical, nihilistic and sullen works. I don't need my Christmas reads to be a grouping of saccharin-sweet Chicken Soup for the Soul types, but my goodness why do some editors gravitate towards gathering nothing but dour. A balance of positivity would be greatly appreciated.

Song: Judy Garland - "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas".
*Book52Club Challenge 2024: None.

[Ceri · Rating 4 out of 5]

🎄 I just finished reading this gorgeous anthology 'Christmas Stories' from the Everyman's Pocket Classics series. I really love these short story anthologies because they introduce me to authors I might not necessarily choose to read. As with all anthologies, there are a variety of genres so there is something for everyone, as such it's pretty impossible to like all the stories. But I'd say I could find something to enjoy in 90% of them. My favourites included 'The Story of the Goblins Who Stole The Sexton' by Charles Dickens, 'Green Holly' by Elizabeth Bowen and my absolute favourite 'The Night Before Christmas' by Nikolai Gogol. 100% recommend this if you're after a spot of seasonal reading.

🎄 Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!