The Norton Book of Ghost Stories

Jacket Description/Back: 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. Publisher Marketing: 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. Publisher Marketing: "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 Review Citations:

Booklist 09/01/1994 pg. 25 (EAN 9780393035643, Hardcover)

Publishers Weekly 09/12/1994 pg. 81 (EAN 9780393035643, Hardcover)

Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/1995 pg. 484 (EAN 9780393035643, Hardcover)

Contributor Bio:  Leithauser, Brad Brad Leithauser was born in Detroit and graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He is the author of five novels, a novel in verse, four previous volumes of poetry, a collection of light verse, and a book of essays. Among his many awards and honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Grant, and a MacArthur Fellowship. An Emily Dickinson Senior Lecturer in the Humanities at Mount Holyoke College, he lives with his wife in Amherst, Massachusetts. In 2005, the president of Iceland inducted him into the Order of the Falcon for his writings about Nordic literature. "From the Hardcover edition."