Cabbages and Kings

by O. Henry

A series of stories which explore aspects of life in a paralytically sleepy Central American town, each advancing some aspect of the larger plot and relating back one to another in a complex structure. The larger, overriding plot slowly explicates its own background, even as it creates a town which is one of the most detailed literary creations of the period. In this book, O. Henry coined the term "banana republic".