Wilbur Daniel Steele won the O. Henry Award for short fiction more times than any other author in the history of the award. One has only to read a few of the selections in this book to understand why. This collection includes some familiar stories ("The Man Who Saw Through Heaven" and "Blue Murder") and many which I'd never seen before ("Isles of Spice and Lilies").

Steele had an uncanny knack for wringing suppressed fears, desires and hopes out of one's soul with his stories. For example, in "Bubbles" (which is narrated by a seven year-old), the reader vicariously experiences the repressed pain and coping mechanisms of a child who has lost a parent. In "The Man Who Saw Through Heaven", a man goes insane when he cannot reconcile his deep, fundamentalist faith with the scientific knowledge gained in a casual conversation with an astronomer. In "How Beautiful with Shoes", an innocent young lady is kidnapped and is left disoriented by her simultaneous attraction to and fear of her abductor. "Blue Murder" is an interesting twist on the Cain and Abel story from the Bible.

In nearly all of Steele's stories, there is a shocking plot twist in the final paragraph. The O. Henry Awards were well-deserved.