"Great Tales of Madness and the Macabre" is a collection of reprinted short stories, compiled by Charles Ardai from the archives of Davis Publications, which includes the magazines EQMM, AHMM, and Asimov’s SF. First, the criticisms: reprint volumes should, to my mind, include brief biographies of the authors, here neglected. In addition, the copyright pages are very confusing, given that the authors are listed in alphabetical order but divided according to the magazine in which the story first appeared, which is just bizarre. That said, the stories themselves are quite good; they include out-of-copyright stories by Guy de Maupassant, Ambrose Bierce, Jack London, Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as more recent authors. My favourites include “Ever After,” by Susan Palwick, a kind of mash-up of vampires, fairy tales and stolen children; “How the Wind Spoke at Madaket,” by Lucius Shepard, a kind of ghostly horror story; Nancy Kress’s “Trinity,” in which the search for God is detailed; and R. A. Wilson’s “Island Man,” a post-apocalyptic tale of the future. There’s good stuff by every writer in here, though, and overall the collection is quite excellent, flaws aside. ( )

A great collection of all the masters in the genre ( )