"I've occasionally been asked, by someone who has heard that I was assembling this anthology, whether I myself believe in ghosts―to which I've replied, less facetiously than might first appear, "Everybody does." I can't believe that any of us, if we dig deep enough in our psyches, is utterly free of the suspicion that the dead continually attend the living. ―Brad Leithauser, from the Introduction This assemblage of twenty-nine of the eeriest stories in English features such talents as Henry James, Shirley Jackson, Elizabeth Bowen, A. S. Byatt, and Elizabeth Taylor, accompanied by an introduction that reevaluates the genre. Henry James and M. R. James head this stellar cast of great ghost story writers. The four stories by Henry James include "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes," written when he was only 24; the four by M. R. James include "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad," a masterly combination of scholarly control and antiquarian detail published in 1904. There's Oliver Onions' "The Beckoning Fair Ones," and chilling tales by the likes of Shirley Jackson, Saki, Elizabeth Bowen, V. S. Pritchett, Muriel Spark, Edith Wharton, John Cheever, and Elizabeth Taylor, among others--18 authors and 29 stories. Brad Leithauser explains these stories' bewitching powers in his astute introduction. Publication date is, appropriately, Halloween. George Cohen 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-eight of the eeriest short stories in the English language. Included are the most intriguing works by the writers who have defined the genre over the years - Henry James, Oliver Onions, and M. R. James - as well as stories by other authors whose forays into the supernatural are less well known: V. S. Pritchett, Muriel Spark, John Cheever, A. S. Byatt, Elizabeth Taylor, and Philip Graham among others. This surprising gathering of writers makes this collection a must-have for confirmed ghost-story fans as well as for those who simply love good writing. Brad Leithauser's introduction 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 ghost stories' bewitching power lies. Brad E. Leithauser (b. February 27, 1953) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and teacher.