Night Shadows Twentieth-Century Stories of the Uncanny

This fine collection of fifteen stories straddles the thin border between ordinary anxiety and existential nightmare. These tales of dread and darkness ignore the traditional demons haunting country houses or popping up from unopened graves, but instead feature characters inhabiting the familiar scenes of quotidian life. That these are tales of ordinary people makes them all the more disquieting, their horrors more sharply edged, precisely because they are set in modern, everyday reality. What the protagonists have in common, regardless of age, status, or profession, is that at some point in their lives, by imperceptible degrees or with alarming rapidity, reality turns strange, the unthinkable becomes conceivable, and the specters of uncertainty, fear, and stark, sheer terror become their constant companions.Kessler, Joan C. is the author of 'Night Shadows Twentieth-Century Stories of the Uncanny', published 2002 under ISBN 9781567921809 and ISBN 1567921809.