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The Big Book of Ghost Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original) [Paperback]

Otto Penzler
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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Book Description

September 18, 2012 Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original
THE BIG BOOK OF GHOST STORIES is a spirited Black Lizard anthology with over a thousand pages of haunted—and haunting—tales. 
The ghost story is perhaps the oldest of all the supernatural literary genres and has captured the imagination of almost every writer to put pen to the page. Here, Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler has followed his keen sense of the supernatural to collect the most chilling and uncanny tales in the canon. These spectral stories span more than a hundred years, from modern-day horrors by Joyce Carol Oates, Chet Williamson and Andrew Klavan, to pulp yarns from August Derleth, Greye La Spina, and M. L. Humphreys, to the atmospheric Victorian tales of Rudyard Kipling, Edith Wharton, and H. P. Lovecraft, not to mention modern works by the likes of Donald E. Westlake and Isaac Asimov that are already classics. Some of these stories have haunted the canon for a century, while others are making their first ghoulish appearance  in book form.  Whether you prefer possessive poltergeists, awful apparitions, or friendly phantoms, these stories are guaranteed to thrill you, tingle the spine, or tickle the funny bone, and keep you turning the pages with fearful delight.

Including such classics as “The Monkey’s Paw” and “The Open Window” and eerie vintage illustrations, and also featuring haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore! AlsoFeaturing haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore!

Frequently Bought Together

The Big Book of Ghost Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original) + The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
Price for both: $41.02

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Volumes of frightfulness. . . . No one should go through life (let alone death) without experiencing W.W. Jacobs’s 'The Monkey’s Paw,' Perceval Landon’s 'Thurnley Abbey,' Ambrose Bierce’s 'The Moonlit Road' and M.R. James’s 'Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad.' But Penzler also includes many stories that should be equally well known. This year, for instance, I read for the first time Ellen Glasgow’s 'The Shadowy Third'."
    --Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

"If you enjoy, as I have since childhood, a great ghost story well told, this book is required reading."
    --Charles McNair, Paste Magazine

"Wonderful. . . . A list on your computer is one thing. A big, fat, juicy, paperback anthology like this is something else altogether."
    --The Buffalo News (editor's choice)

"Jam packed with enough classic horror and otherworldly stories to keep you having nightmares through the month of October. . . . This collection of short stories coupled with eerie vintage illustrations is a must-have for the nightstand. The only thing that can make it better is a flashlight under the covers."
    --The Long Island Press

"This mountain-sized omnibus contains every wrinkle of the form you could ever want. . . . There’s enough in this volume to please both dilettantes and devotees among ghost story readers."
    --Publishers Weekly

"Penzler has done an excellent job of collecting interesting, unnerving, and fascinating stories as well as providing nifty tidbits in the introductions. Reading most of these stories just before trying to sleep, though, is not recommended."
    --Booklist

About the Author

Otto Penzler lives in New York City.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 848 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage (September 18, 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0307474496
  • ISBN-13: 978-0307474490
  • Product Dimensions: 7 x 1.5 x 9.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #322,378 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
(6)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars A Mixed Collection, Best If You Enjoy Pulp Horror December 12, 2012
Format:Paperback
This book was published in 2012 and contained 79 short stories by 72 authors (and 3 co-authors). More than half of the writers were from the U.S., a third from the U.K., and 1-2 each from Ireland, France, Canada and New Zealand. The works ranged from the 1820s (Washington Irving) to 2011. The editor claimed it was the largest collection ever compiled exclusively on ghost stories.

Besides Irving, the few from the 1800s included Hawthorne, Fitz-James O'Brien, Wilkie Collins, Kipling, Wilde, Twain, Bierce and Lafcadio Hearn. The first three decades of the 20th century accounted for nearly two-thirds of the collection, including a very generous helping of works from Weird Tales magazine in the 1920s and 30s, comprising about a fifth of the book. Aside from these early decades of the 1900s, the coverage was rather light. Prominent recent authors included Donald Westlake, Joyce Carol Oates and Ramsey Campbell.

Categories in the anthology included classic tales, pulp horror, haunted houses, and ghosts related to children, love, humor, dreams, séances, and women. For this reader, the best of the classics were M. R. James ("Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad"), W. W. Jacobs ("The Monkey's Paw"), Perceval Landon ("Thurnley Abbey") and Saki ("The Open Window"). Several stories on love, children and humor were also memorable: Lafcadio Hearn ("The Story of Ming-Y," a tale of ghostly love set in medieval China), Ambrose Bierce ("The Moonlit Road," with conflicting narratives that may have inspired Akutagawa), A. M. Burrage ("Playmates"), Rosemary Timperley ("Harry") and Wilde ("The Canterville Ghost"). Enjoyment of the collection might depend on how many of these classics are seen here for the first time.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars What better than ghost stores for Christmas December 21, 2012
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
the Big Book of Ghost Stories, ed. by Otto Penzer. I 've never read a short story I ike but I adore ghost stores most of which are pretty short. go figure. Some of the shortest stores are the mot intriguing. I love reading some of the classics and they scare me all over again. and the the pleaure of finding a new ghost story, I've never read before; whoopee!!

Nobody can do a better compendium of ghost stories than Otto Penzler and my guru in the field whom I follow blindly is Michael Dirda. Mr. Dirda reviews of specific ghost stories are superb.

I happen to agree with Mr Dirda, ghost stores are best read in the dead of the winter by the dying of the light.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Lost treasures!! November 9, 2012
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
VERY pleasantly surprised by this collection. I loved the combination of the original artwork with some lost treasures...I have read thousands of ghost stories, but picking up this anthology only showed 2 that I'd read before...and they were all fun. Well worth picking up!
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5.0 out of 5 stars Nothing Better Than a Good Ghost Story June 15, 2013
By Tom B.
Format:Paperback
You can not go wrong picking up this terrifying tome of classic ghostly tales. You don't just read this book once and never pick it up again. These are the kind of stories you will enjoy reading over and over. They're that good! I keep this book on my night-stand and read it when I can't sleep. I travel a lot too and also take it with me to pass the time throughout my journeys. The book is just a pure delight!
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5.0 out of 5 stars Vintage Ghost Reading Pleasure April 5, 2013
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Penzler always delivers in whatever genre he is compiling for his Big Book collections. This volume is a pleasure to read if you care about story and structure as these are authors who excel in presenting a well told tale. The stories are categorized in a way to get you to your favorite format in a hurry i.e. do you prefer haunted houses? female ghosts? poltergeists? or maybe ghosts in waiting? You will be able to choose which section appeals to you most or least so that you may read them accordingly. There are tales by famous authors that you may have read long ago and will be glad to become re-aquainted with again as well as ones that you will have never heard of before. There are also more modern tales from names that the modern reader will recognize.These are curl up in a comfortable chair stories and maybe even with the lights out except your booklight stories that will entertain your gooseflesh.
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7 of 11 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars i'm loving this boo(oOOOoo!)k October 10, 2012
Format:Paperback
a friend gave me this book recently, and i've since made it my morning habit to wake up and read a ghost story every morning (sometimes i cheat and read two). i'm enjoying this book immensely. the stories, by a wide variety of authors, are consistently well-written, and while i don't find every one to be ultra-scary, some do send physical chills up my spine. i love that in a ghost story.

if you enjoy ghost stories, i highly recommend this book. i'm glad it's as big as it is because i don't want it to end.

i was going to say, "because i don't ever want to reach the end," but reading this book has got me skittish enough to fear tempting fate in that way. ;)
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