Mistresses of the Dark: 25 Macabre Tales by Master Storytellers

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The dark side of life lurks just around the corner from the safe avenues of the familiar. In Mistresses of the Dark, twenty-five leading female writers dare to stray from the path of the ordinary and venture into the shadows. Nadine Gordimer imagines a nightmare relationship between a father and son. Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor conjure grim Gothic visions of private desperation. Specters of loss haunt tales by Alison Lurie and A. S. Byatt, and an atmosphere of unease blows through stories by Shirley Jackson and Doris Lessing. The contributors include a Nobel laureate, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and recipients of the Booker Prize and the National Book Award.

In subtle and sophisticated stories, these authors find moods of menace and tremors of dread in the most unlikely settings: the home, the office, the neighborhood, the bedroom. Unsettling encounters sure to stir the soul await the reader of these uncommon literary masterpieces.

Contents: Death by landscape / Margaret Atwood -- The July ghost / A.S. Byatt -- The bloody chamber / Angela Carter -- Don't look now / Daphne du Maurier -- Fleur / Louise Erdrich -- Up north / Mavis Gallant -- Letter from his father / Nadine Gordimer -- The pond / Patricia Highsmith -- The butler catcher / A.M. Homes -- The summer people / Shirley Jackson -- Ovando / Jamaica Kincaid -- Poor little Saturday / Madeleine L'Engle -- The ones who walk away from omelas / Ursula K. Le Guin -- Plants and girls / Doris Lessing -- Another Halloween / Alison Lurie -- The parallel world / Valerie Martin -- Number 10 / Edna O'Brien -- The river / Flannery O'Connor -- The virgin in the rose-bower, or the tragedy of Glen Mawr Manor / Joyce Carol Oates -- The dreadful day of judgement / Ruth Rendell -- A spiritualist / Jean Rhys -- The dummy / Susan Sontag -- The girl I left behind me / Muriel Spark -- Spirit of the house / Fay Weldon -- Clytie / Eudora Welty.