Ghosts are resilient creatures. They thrive in an atmosphere of candlelight and decay, in antique manors, graveyards and cloisters and yet, as this anthology triumphantly demonstrates, they are equally at home under the harsh light of the electric bulb. The advent of the motor car and the invention of the telephone have merely tested their ingenuity, and exercised the talents of a host of writers.

The fractures and schisms of the twentieth-century are reflected in the current proliferation of literary genres, and in the marvellous variety that a single genre can embrace. Leading exponents of ghost fiction such as M. R. James and Algernon Blackwood are joined by authors such as Scott Fitzgerald, A. S. Byatt, William Trevor, and Alison Lurie; women, in particular, have embraced the form with skill and versatility.

As well as the returning dead there are haunted typewriters, malevolent furniture, and urban ghosts, phantoms of smoke an soot. Occasionally with humour, but more often with obliquity and restraint, these stories both entrance and terrify.

1. This collection shows how ghost stories have successfully utilized the landscapes, technologies, and consciousness of contemporary life to adapt to the modern age with imagination and flair. Distinctive and gripping, these stories will linger long in the memory.