Customer Reviews

Witches' Brew: Horror and Supernatural Stories by Women (Macmillan midnight library)

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This is a collection of 17 "Horror & Supernatural Stories by Women," though some seem more in the suspense genre to me. Marcia Muller (author of the Sharon McCone detective novels as well as Elena Oliverez & Joanna Stark trilogies) has teamed with her husband, Bill Pronzini (author of the nameless detective novels) in several enjoyable, themed anthologies: Kill or Cure, Child's Play, She Won the West, & this one. Muller includes one of her own tales in each--usually one of the best in the book. They also teamed on several novels including: Duo, Double, & some of the Oliverez books. They work well together. This one is the strangest. It includes:
Ann Radcliffe's The Haunted Chamber,
Mary Shelley's The Last Man,
Charlotte Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper,
Gertrude Atherton's The Striding Place,
Edith Wharton's Afterward,
May Sinclair's Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched,
Agatha Christie's The Lamp,
Rebecca West's The Gray Men,
Dorothy L. Sayers' The Cyprian Cat,
Virginia Woolf's A Haunted House,
Jane Rice's The Idol of the Flies,
Flannery O'Connor's Judgment Day,
Daphne du Maurier's The Birds,
Mary Counselman's Night Court,
Shirley Jackson's The Lovely House,
Marcia Muller's Kindling Point, &
Joyce Oates' The Bingo Master.

Many of the authors are quite famous as is "The Birds" from which a movie was made. I particularly liked "Night Court" -- not only scary, spooky, but with a killer ending--& the clever Kindling Point. Several were essentially spooky mysteries where the reader can try to guess the ending. It's an easy read & a fun book overall. Enjoy.

While hard to obtain (it's out of print) Witches' Brew is an smorgasbord of female horror fiction. Check out Charlotte Perkins Gillman's The Yellow Wallpaper, a literary classic about women's oppression during the victorian age. Jane Rice's Idol of the Flies offers a chilling impression of the horrors of childhood. My favorite, Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched, is a stark tale of values and sins of the flesh.