This (very partial) list includes The Mammoth Book of Victorian and Edwardian Ghost Stories (Richard Dalby, Ed.), The Literary Ghost (Larry Dark, Ed.) 50 Great Horror Stories (John Canning, Ed.), A Pleasing Terror,the M.R. James omnibus edition from Ash-Tree Press (a glorious, glorious, luxurious book to own), October Dreams (Chizmar and Morrish, Eds.), Northwest Passages, by the brilliant Barbara Roden, and of course, Peter Straub's classic Ghost Story. I posed the signed limited edition hardcover of Ghost Story from Hill House in this stack (it's one of my most prized possessions) but I'm toting around the paperback in my briefcase.
Susie Moloney's terrifying contemporary ghost story, The Dwelling, deserves its own review here, and will get one. There's a copy of The Haunting of Hill House around here too somewhere, or else Beckett's made off with it.
(Author's Note: My books aren't usually stacked up like this on my desk, nor are my owl bookends usually separated from each other, or perched theatrically on a stack of supernatural fiction. They've mated for life, like night-flying dolphins. The photo of my buddy Ian Rogers, whose short story collection, Every House is Haunted, will be read by all the cool kids this fall, however, is permanently installed on the edge of my desk. Truth in advertising, my friends. Truth in advertising.)
