The Norton Book of Ghost Stories

This spellbinding book will delight as it terrifies. Brad Leithauser, the noted poet and novelist, had excellence as his only criterion in assembling this collection of twenty-nine of the eeriest stories in the English language. Included are the best works by the writers who have defined the genre over the years—Henry James, M. R. James, Oliver Onions, and Shirley Jackson—as well as by other authors whose forays into the supernatural are less well known Edith Wharton, Saki, Elizabeth Bowen, V. S. Pritchett, Muriel Spark, John Cheever, A. S. Byatt, Elizabeth Taylor, Penelope Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Jane Howard, and Philip Graham, among others. This surprising gathering of writers makes this collection a must-have for confirmed ghost story fans as well as those who simply love good writing.

Leithauser has written an introduction that redefines the genre, finding its origins in our fascination with the world beyond our senses. Whatever the stories' similarities, however, each creates its own unique atmosphere of uncanniness that is as hard to analyze as it is to resist. After all, it is "in their restless unease, their dissatisfaction with the provable," as Leithauser writes, that the stories' bewitching power lies.

1994 / ISBN 0-393-03564-6 / 400 pages / LITERATURE/HORROR

• Brad Leithauser, poet and novelist, lectures at Mt. Holyoke College. His books include Hundreds of Fireflies, Equal Distance, Cats of the Temple, Hence, The Mail from Anywhere, and Seaward. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.