Table of Contents

Brother Robber - Helene Christaller
Three Young Kings - George Sumner Albee
Transfiguration - Madeleine L’Engle
The Cribmaker’s Trip to Heaven - Reimmichl
The Guest - Nikolai S. Lesskov
Christmas Day in the Morning - Pearl S. Buck
The Other Wise Man - Henry van Dyke
The Miraculous Staircase - Arthur Gordon
No Room in the Inn - Katherine Paterson
The Chess Player - Ger Koopman
The Christmas Lie - Dorothy Thomas
The Riders of St. Nicholas - Jack Schaefer
Grandfather’s Stories - Ernst Wiechert
The Vexation of Barney Hatch - B. J. Chute
The Empty Cup - Opal Menius
The Well of the Star - Elizabeth Goudge
A Certain Small Shepherd - Rebecca Caudill
The Carpenter’s Christmas - Peter K. Rosegger
What the Kings Brought - Ruth Sawyer
The Christmas Rose - Selma Lagerlöf

Promotional Information

Twenty tales for the holiday season selected for their spiritual value and literary quality.

Reviews

If you’re giving one book for Christmas, make it this one. --Jim Trelease, author, The Read-Aloud Handbook

This is undoubtedly the most literary collection of Christmas stories to be published this season. The editors at Plough have taken a conservative approach, eschewing sentimental claptrap in favor of classic, elegant writing. There are some standard-bearers here, including Henry van Dyke's enduring yarn The Other Wise Man and Pearl S. Buck's gentle and touching story Christmas Day in the Morning. Some contributions are deeply theological (Madeleine L'Engle's Transfiguration) while others offer the dark, discerning cadences of a timeless fable (Selma Lagerlof's The Christmas Rose). The collection has an international flavor, with stories set in Cuba, Germany, Siberia, Palestine, Denmark and Spain, as well as in Vermont and New York City. Readers who crave literary excellence as well as a heartwarming Christmas message will relish this carefully selected and intelligent anthology. --Publishers Weekly