The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories by Michael Newton

This means that I felt it best not to shy away from some obvious choices. 'In choosing the texts for this anthology, I worked on the principle that a story should be good in itself: that is, well written, sophisticated, and (if possible) frightening. A little to my surprise, I liked a large number of the stories, but perhaps this shouldn't have been surprising since the anthologist, Michael Newton, in his introduction, noted:

( )Īlthough I'm not a big ghost story fan, when this book was on display at my favorite bookstore shortly before Halloween I snapped it up, and have been dipping into it ever since. I wish the anthology included several contemporary stories. Most notes explained a word in the text, and it would have been nice not to have to flip on the rare occasion I actually needed to see a definition. I wish the end notes had been true footnotes. I really wish the author introductions had been at the beginning of each story instead of with the end notes. Purchasers essential pay for the editor's additions-an introduction, a nice bibliography, a bit on each author, and a few end notes. Almost all the stories are available in the public domain, so this collection is a bit pricy when that is considered. Jacobs and 'Afterward' by Edith Wharton), others just fell flat (such as the overly long Henry James story, 'The Jolly Corner,' and Edward Bulwer Lytton's 'The Haunted and the Haunters: or, The House and the Brain.') We read this as a group, and most of us even questioned whether some of the stories were true ghost stories. While some of the stories were interesting (such as 'The Monkey's Paw' by W.

The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories by Michael Newton