The Big Book of Ghost Stories - by Otto Penzler (Paperback)

About the Book

After pulps, vampires, and zombies, Penzler turns his expert eye to a new genre for this collection.

Book Synopsis

Over a thousand pages of haunted--and haunting--ghost tales: the most complete collection of uncanny, spooky, creepy tales ever published! Edited and with an introduction by Otto Penzler. Including stories by Joyce Carol Oates, Rudyanrd Kipling, Isaac Asimov, James MacCreigh, and many more! Featuring eerie vintage ghost illustrations.

The ghost story is perhaps the oldest of all the supernatural literary genres and has captured the imagination of almost every writer to put pen to the page. Here, Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler has followed his keen sense of the supernatural to collect the most chilling and uncanny tales in the canon.

These spectral stories span more than a hundred years, from modern-day horrors by Joyce Carol Oates, Chet Williamson and Andrew Klavan, to pulp yarns from August Derleth, Greye La Spina, and M. L. Humphreys, to the atmospheric Victorian tales of Rudyard Kipling, Edith Wharton, and H. P. Lovecraft, not to mention modern works by the likes of Donald E. Westlake and Isaac Asimov that are already classics. Some of these stories have haunted the canon for a century, while others are making their first ghoulish appearance in book form. Whether you prefer possessive poltergeists, awful apparitions, or friendly phantoms, these stories are guaranteed to thrill you, tingle the spine, or tickle the funny bone, and keep you turning the pages with fearful delight.

Including such classics as "The Monkey's Paw" and "The Open Window" and eerie vintage illustrations, and also featuring haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore! AlsoFeaturing haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore!

Review Quotes

"Volumes of frightfulness. . . . No one should go through life (let alone death) without experiencing W.W. Jacobs's 'The Monkey's Paw, ' Perceval Landon's 'Thurnley Abbey, ' Ambrose Bierce's 'The Moonlit Road' and M.R. James's 'Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad.' But Penzler also includes many stories that should be equally well known. This year, for instance, I read for the first time Ellen Glasgow's 'The Shadowy Third'."
--The Washington Post

"If you enjoy, as I have since childhood, a great ghost story well told, this book is required reading."
--Paste Magazine

"Wonderful. . . . A list on your computer is one thing. A big, fat, juicy, paperback anthology like this is something else altogether."
--The Buffalo News (editor's choice)

"Jam packed with enough classic horror and otherworldly stories to keep you having nightmares through the month of October. . . . This collection of short stories coupled with eerie vintage illustrations is a must-have for the nightstand. The only thing that can make it better is a flashlight under the covers."
--The Long Island Press

"This mountain-sized omnibus contains every wrinkle of the form you could ever want. . . . There's enough in this volume to please both dilettantes and devotees among ghost story readers."
--Publishers Weekly

"Penzler has done an excellent job of collecting interesting, unnerving, and fascinating stories as well as providing nifty tidbits in the introductions. Reading most of these stories just before trying to sleep, though, is not recommended."
--Booklist

About the Author

OTTO PENZLER is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. He was publisher of The Armchair Detective, the founder of the Mysterious Press and the Armchair Detective Library, and created the publishing firm Otto Penzler Books. He has twice received the Edgar Award, for The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection and The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives, as well as the Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his many contributions to the field. He is the editor of The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, which was a New York Times bestseller, and several more Vintage Crime/Black Lizard anthologies, including The Big Book of Black Mask Stories, The Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries, The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories, and The Big Book of Jack the Ripper. He is also the series editor of The Best American Mystery Stories of the Year. His other anthologies include Murder for Love, Murder for Revenge, Murder and Obsession, The 50 Greatest Mysteries of All Time, and The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century. He wrote 101 Greatest Movies of Mystery & Suspense. He lives in New York City.