This baby was given as a gift by one of my lovely and brilliant daughters. The only books I feel I HAVE to read anymore are ones that are gifted to me. The catch phrase of these cheap collections is "public domain." The copyrights are long gone on these babies. You won't find a story beyond 1923.

Fall River Press is a discount imprint of B&N. If you look around the bargain shelves and tables at B&N you will find lots of these inexpensive hardcover type genre collections (as well as other crap: Astrology for the Family, etc.) by Fall River. Don't always turn your nose up, I've actually found one or two worthwhile, usually a gathering of one or more collections from the 80s or 90s from real publishers, that you might have missed. B&N seems to have largely given up the B&N colophon which these type of things used to always appear under.

These are largely well produced on good paper that doesn't yellow and usually have catchy dust covers and actual end-papers, headbands, sewn in numbers. You are mostly, but not always going to get the ubiquitous cardboard and paper "hardcover" that I so despise. These are usually actually printed and produced in North America which is refreshing for discount books these days.

This sucker is about 400 pages with itty bitty print which means you get a lot for your money but it isn't always the pleasantest ergonomic read. There are a lot of typos in this, the kind you get when texts are digitally scanned and never proofread.

The story selection is actually decent. I have only read about half of these before. The editor did a good job of picking some of the lesser known stories by the better known authors. There are a couple of things I didn't like. Leave out The Monkey's Paw. Jacobs wasn't that good a writer, had almost no supernatural stories besides this one, and everyone has already read this. Blackwood, find something besides The Wendigo or The Willows. At least in this case it was The Willows instead of the inferior Wendigo. Lovecraft, The Outsider has to be one of the least Lovecraftian stories Lovecraft ever wrote, and it's just not that good besides. I would have put in the Haunter of the Dark. Poe, Masque of the Red Death, again everyone knows this. Put in something more disturbing and less well known like Berenice.

One thing I noticed while reading this collection, and something I think is true of older horror short stories is the presence of the framing story. This, in my opinion, usually detracts from the eeriness of most stories, however in the hands of a skilled writer like Machen (White People, Three Imposters) can actually enhance or become essential to the weirdness of a story. ( )

For its gorgeously gruesome cover which promises so much, I must confess that this was one long haul of a read. Not unpleasant, mind you, just long. This is not a book you will read in one or two sittings.

There's good reasons for this. The antiquated language used by the authors is a part of it, to be sure, but that can't be helped, and anyway it adds to the charm of reading. It's much more a problem of the book itself, which is poorly edited (this seems to be more and more common, sadly) and the tee-niny typeface, which requires plenty of light, an equal measure of patience, and strong reading glasses, at least for me. It's quite annoying. I don't know who's checking the galley proofs at Sterling, but I know lots of people who could do far better. Myself included.

But. There's always one of those, isn't there? The stories are what you come for, and be assured, there's barely a lemon in the carload. If you dig vintage horror, you'll eat this stuff up. Name a writer of horror or dark fantasy from the 17-18-1900s and they're likely represented. Chances are you've read some of these stories already, but so what? Read them again. Myself, I found only a few that I'd read recently, and it was like being reintroduced to old friends. And the "new" stories were pretty universally terrific.

So, if you can get past the jarring typos and the tiny print, you'll like it. Turn up the lights, put on some appropriate music, and enjoy! ( )