From the gothic Old South to revolutionary Mexico, few writers have evoked such a multitude of worlds, both exterior and interior, as powerfully as Katherine Anne Porter. This collection gathers together the best of her Pulitzer Prize-winning short fiction, including ''Pale Horse, Pale Rider'', where a young woman lies in a fever during the influenza epidemic, her childhood memories mingling with fears for her fiance on his way to war, and ''Noon Wine'', a haunting story of tragedy and scandal on a small dairy farm in Texas. In all of the compelling stories collected here, harsh and tragic truths are expressed in prose both brilliant and precise.