Wandering Ghosts — F. Marion Crawford / Francis Marion Crawford

Houses haunted by the skull-bones of a dead man! Vampires! Haunted steamships! Dolls like Chuckie -- but nice! Horror fans will adore F. Marion Crawford's Wandering Ghosts: Crawford had a sensibility and a gift a lot like Peter Straub's (though no one could mistake this book for a collection of Straub's stories -- their talents might be similar, but their subject matter isn't). But, oddly, he isn't remembered, like Stoker and Hodgson and Shelley, as a horror writer, nor, like Robert Louis Stevenson, (who gave the world both Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) as a writer of adventure. More like Henry James, we suppose: the man had a reputation, in his day, as a serious writer.

Yuck.

This book, at least, is a horror collection. We know you'll love it.