"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.