"Spanning Gaiman's career to date, The Neil Gaiman Reader: Selected Fiction is a ... collection from one of the world's most beloved writers, chosen by those who know his work best: his devoted readers. A ... representation of Gaiman's ... imaginative fiction, this ... volume includes excerpts from each of his five novels for adults--Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, Anansi Boys, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane--and nearly fifty of his short...

Something pushed out from the body there on the floor, and stretched forth a slimy, wavering tentacle... Perhaps no figure better embodies the transition from the Gothic tradition to modern horror than Arthur Machen. In the final decade of the nineteenth century, the Welsh writer produced a seminal body of tales of occult horror, spiritual and physical corruption, and malignant survivals from the primeval past which horrified and scandalised-late-Victorian...