A few years ago, I decided to try something completely different: a novel, my first. Specifically, it’s historical fiction about the author O. Henry (born William Sidney Porter), who arrived in New York in 1902, after a checkered past (to say the least), and captured the rapidly changing city in such short stories as “The Gift of the Magi,” “The Cop and the Anthem,” and “The Last Leaf.”

The book–Alias O. Henry–will be published on September 16, 2025, by Paul Dry Books, an outstanding firm in Philadelphia that has produced a beautiful book, including this great cover by Ian Koviac.

Although the official pub date isn’t for a couple of weeks, it’s currently available direct from the publisher at this link, or from bookshop.org. If you’re an Amazon person, you can pre-order.

The advance notice for the novel has been gratifying in the extreme. Here’s a generous (in both senses of the word) sample:

“[A]n exuberant biographical novel . . . Riffing cleverly on O. Henry’s most cherished stories, Yagoda presents a vivid, witty, and delectable tale of crime and creativity.”—Booklist

“The editor of an acclaimed edition of O. Henry’s stories for the Library of America, Yagoda brings his research skills, knowledge of the author, and love of the era to this tale of turn-of-the-century Manhattan, evoking its crowded streets, many vices, and colorful (and often dangerous) citizenry, not to mention the lucrative world of freelance writing at a moment when short stories reigned supreme . . . Gotham might be a perilous place for most, but it’s the perfect spot for a writer in need of material.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Yagoda delivers a hit with his first novel. . . . Yagoda’s descriptions of the grimy underbelly of a city whose vices are growing as fast as its population provide an authentic backdrop, while his wry humor strikes the perfect balance. O. Henry enthusiasts will get the literary references; however, intimate knowledge of his works isn’t necessary to appreciate Yagoda’s clever irony, which pays homage to the master of the short story without attempting to overshadow him.”
—Library Journal

“Alias O. Henry finds Ben Yagoda on the prowl, tracking William Sydney Porter through the grime and glitter of turn-of-the-century New York. Here’s Porter—not yet O. Henry—hustling poolrooms, conning marks, scribbling tales in rented rooms, and ducking the law while chasing the muse. Yagoda, part literary sleuth, part historian with a novelist’s instinct, cracks open the city and the man. The result is pure O. Henry: unexpected, full of heart, and impossible to resist.” —Laurie Gwen Shapiro, author of The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage That Made an American Icon 

“Alias O. Henry is a delight—a buoyant fictional conjecture about the writer’s hidden life, full of surprise cameos, playful allusions, and other literary and historical Easter eggs. Best of all is Yagoda’s rich portrayal of Ragtime-era New York City, an imaginative evocation as vivid and distinctive as O. Henry’s own.” —Gary Krist, author of Trespassers at the Golden Gate: A True Account of Love, Murder, and Madness in Gilded-Age San Francisco

“Ben Yagoda, the accomplished biographer, literary historian and linguist, has written his first work of fiction, and the result—Alias O. Henry—is a triumph. Blending a fecund imagination with a scholar’s mastery of time and place, he has fashioned a beguiling portrait of America’s most famous short-story writer (born in 1862 as William Sidney Porter) and the hectic metropolis on the Hudson that inspired ‘The Gift of the Magi’ and ‘The Last Leaf.’ With empathy and insight, Yagoda reminds us that New York, New York was the irresistible destination for hustlers and dreamers—including the secretive former pharmacist from North Carolina who became O. Henry—long before Sinatra sang about it.”—David Friedman, author of Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity

“Ben Yagoda’s imaginative portrait of William Sydney Porter is a jaunty ride through the bustling streets of New York at the dawn of the modern age—when newspaper men, gumshoes and shopgirls rubbed shoulders with the likes of Thomas Edison, Will Rogers and Bat Masterson. Weaving the facts of Porter’s life together with the themes of his stories and the history of the city, Yagoda has created a novel with a vintage vibe and twisty plot worthy of the name O. Henry.”—Wes Davis, author of American Journey and The Ariadne Objective

“Ben Yagoda brings the writer O. Henry fully to life with the affection and specificity that animate O. Henry’s own stories. It’s all here: early-century perfumes and stenches, music and cacophony, confidences and betrayals. That Yagoda—one of our great chroniclers of language—should find his way so masterfully to this story is no surprise. He delivers us into a Gotham cityscape at a time when new languages erupted in the deadline work of newspaper reporters, sports scribes, cartoonists and movie makers, years before their rugged glories congealed into mass media. Yet he also locates a certain promise for our media-drenched time: all is not lost if there is but a solitary writer using all six senses—the sixth being compassion—to return pen to paper.”
—Michael Tisserand, author of Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White

“In this masterful and inspired exercise that can only be called researched-based time travel, author Ben Yagoda breathes new life into the rich spirit of O. Henry. Drawing on a library’s worth of vintage material, Yagoda treats us to an accurate, vivid portrait of a quintessentially American character in his own time and place.”
—Kenneth Finkel, professor emeritus, Temple University

“Alias O. Henry transports you into the world of the peripatetic—and sometimes prevaricating—William Sydney Porter. Ben Yagoda weaves two origin stories, Porter’s and the inspirations for his works written as O. Henry. Yagoda takes you back to Porter’s muse, that is, New York City, at the beginning of the 20th century from its gritty underbelly to the colorful characters that populate its noisy streets. This is a novel that entertains and delights.”
—Delia Cabe, author of Storied Bars of New York: Where Literary Luminaries Go to Drink