his collection of brilliant, chilling and challenging stories from the realm of the supernatural, each individually illustrated in black and white, ranges from the sinister and macabre to the humorous and fanciful. Some of the tales are by well-known writers of the genre, such as Edgar Allan Poe and M.R. James. Others, like Robert Graves’ nightmarish mystery, The Shout or E.M. Forster’s haunting Story of the Siren, though by world-famous authors, have been undeservedly neglected and remain virtually unknown.

The story settings extend form the heyday of nineteenth century mystery writing – represented by such writers as Ambrose Bierce, Guy de Maupassant and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – to the frightening immediacy of contemporary stories like Ray Bradbury’s Fever Dream and Robert Bloch’s Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper. In tone and subject matter the stories range from irresistible cumulative horror, as in Mrs. Amworth by E.F. Benson, to the clipped ironic style of Gogol’s masterpiece, The Overcoat, including also a flavour of Gothic melodrama in Matthew Lewis’ The Monk, the subtle sexuality of The Gray Wolf by George Macdonald and J.R.R. Tolkien’s celebrated world of wizardry and magic.

Every variety of supernatural phenomenon is contained within these pages, making this anthology both an ideal introduction for new readers of the genre and a valuable addition to the library of the established connoisseur.