For more than two hundred years the ghost story has held a particular fascination for women writers. From the Gothic novelists of the eighteenth century, through the stories of Mary Shelley and Mrs. Oliphant, to Elizabeth Bowen and Angela Carter, women have used the mystery of the supernatural to challenge myths and explore questions of sexuality, love, and identity in surprising and disquieting ways.

This marvelously diverse collection of twentieth-century tales - many from the 1920s and 1930s, the heyday of the ghost story - is the first anthology of ghost stories written by women. It includes work by some thirty writers, among them specially commissioned stories by such modern masters as Angela Carter, Sara Maitland, and Lisa St. Aubin de Terán. It also comprises stories by Elizabeth Taylor, Edith Wharton, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Fay Weldon, Rose Macaulay, Norah Lofts, and many others.