Delving deep into the sub-genre of Dark Fantasy, fiction expert Mike Ashley has gathered an unsettling mixture of twisted tales, encounters with logic-defying creatures and nightmarish fables certain to perplex, beguile and of course, entertain.

This collection of Vernon Lee's uniquely weird short stories and dark fantasies proves why she was once considered among the best of the genre, and why she deserves to return to those ranks today.

E F Benson's 'spook stories' pushed the boundaries of the ghost story tradition by exploring new, previously 'out of bounds' settings - such as public transport and even hauntings by daylight - to frighten his readers from the 1890s to the 1930s.

This new anthology follows the instrumental contributions made by women writers to the weird tale, and revives the lost authors of the early pulp magazines along with the often overlooked work of more familiar authors.