An amazing anthology of stories that not only represent the best of horror fiction but document the - "descent" - of such fiction over more two centuries. The stories are divided into three streams: moral, psychological, and fantastic. Included are the familiar and the unfamiliar (at least to this reader) from some of the greatest authors writing in any genre to the great specialists in the field of horror fiction. This is a collection to be relished and referred to when the desire to be terrified takes your fancy. ( )

Contains:
pt. I. The color of evil. The reach / Stephen King --
Evening primrose / John Collier --
The ash-tree / M.R. James --
The new mother / Lucy Clifford --
There's a long, long trail a-winding / Russell Kirk --
The call of Cthulhu / H.P. Lovecraft --
The summer people / Shirley Jackson --
The whimper of whipped dogs / Harlan Ellison --
Young Goodman Brown / Nathaniel Hawthorne --
Mr. Justice Harbottle / J. Sheridan Le Fanu --
The crowd / Ray Bradbury --
The autopsy / Michael Shea --
John Charrington's wedding / E. Nesbit --
Sticks / Karl Edward Wagner --
Larger than oneself / Robert Aickman --
Belsen express / Fritz Leiber --
Yours truly, Jack the Ripper / Robert Bloch --
If Damon comes / Charles L. Grant --
Vandy, Vandy / Manly Wade Wellman. pt. II. The Medusa in the shield. The swords / Robert Aickman --
The roaches / Thomas M. Disch --
Bright segment / Theodore Sturgeon --
Dread / Clive Barker --
The fall of the house of Usher / Edgar Allan Poe --
The monkey / Stephen King --
Within the walls of Tyre / Michael Bishop --
The rats in the walls / H.P. Lovecraft --
Schalken the painter / J. Sheridan Le Fanu --
The yellow wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins Gilman --
A rose for Emily / William Faulkner --
How love came to Professor Guildea / Robert Hichens --
Born of man and woman / Richard Matheson --
My dear Emily / Joanna Russ --
You can go now / Dennis Etchison --
The rocking-horse winner / D.H. Lawrence --
Three days / Tanith Lee --
Good country people / Flannery O'Connor --
Mackintosh Willy / Ramsey Campbell --
The jolly corner / Henry James. pt. III. A fabulous formless darkness. Smoke ghost / Fritz Leiber --
Seven American nights / Gene Wolfe --
The signal-man / Charles Dickens --
Crouch End / Stephen King --
Night-side / Joyce Carol Oates --
Seaton's aunt / Walter de la Mare --
Clara Militch / Ivan Turgenev --
The repairer of reputations / Robert W. Chambers --
The beckoning fair one / Oliver Onions --
What was it? / Fitz-James O'Brien --
The beautiful stranger / Shirley Jackson --
The damned thing / Ambrose Bierce --
Afterward / Edith Wharton --
The willows / Algernon Blackwood --
The Asian shore / Thomas M. Disch --
The hospice / Robert Aickman --
A little something for us tempunauts / Philip K. Dick.

A decent collection of mostly (apart from Le Fanu) twentieth-century dark fiction. My favorites by far were "Sticks" by Karl Edward Wagner, about a fisherman who stumbles upon an ancient ritual site festooned with unsettling stick figures; and "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs," which suggests a modern god of urban violence and the madness of the crowded, and which many years ago was my introduction to the work of Harlan Ellison. ( )

This is quite a collection! A veritable "murder's row" of great horror authors! And, as a big fan of Stephen King, three from him, including the Lovecraftian "Crouch End", which is not one of my faves. But, beware! Not only is this a scary group of tales, it's one heck of a heavy volume to boot! Read and workout at the same time! ( )

A must have for lovers of horror. ( )