A Twist at the End: A Novel of O. Henry

In an artful blending of history, literature, and vivid imagination, author Steven Saylor has crafted a novel that, much as Caleb Carr's bestselling "The Alienist," combines real characters and true crime into a story that is an engrossing work of fiction. The city of Austin, Texas, "is fearfully dull," wrote young Will Porter to a friend in the spring of 1885, "except for the frequent raids of the Servant Girl Annihilators, who make things lively in the dead of night." Years later, Will Porter would become famous as O. Henry, the toast of New York and the most celebrated writer in America. The long-ago Texas killings, which he dubbed the work of the Servant Girl Annihilators -- perhaps the first recorded serial murders in America -- would remain unsolved. But the appearance of a merciless blackmailer and a mysterious stranger would draw Porter back into the past, and back to Texas, to confront the stunning solution to those murders -- and the secrets of his own soul. When he was a young man in Austin in that spring of 1885, Porter fell in love. Her name was Eula Phillips. She was beautiful. She was married to someone elsSaylor, Steven is the author of 'A Twist at the End: A Novel of O. Henry' with ISBN 9780684856810 and ISBN 0684856816.