Genre: Horror, fantasy
450 pages
This book is a collection of eight short horror stories (or "strange stories" to use the author's preferred term) by English author Robert Aickman.
An English tourist in Greece makes an unwise trip to a shunned island; two young women on a walking holiday in northern England shelter from a severe storm in a remote farmhouse, only to discover some disturbing secrets about heir initially friendly host; a lonely academic becomes obsessed with a series of strange telephone calls from a mysterious woman; a mother becomes terrified of her increasingly violent and ever hungry twin sons who seem to be growing at an unnatural rate; a man is haunted throughout his life by a faceless specter whose appearance always means death for someone close to him; a little girl receives a grotesque dollhouse as a gift which has such a strange effect on her that her parents get rid of it - years later the dolls seek revenge; a tourist in Venice takes a gondola trip with a seductive but sinister guide; and a woman visiting Sweden stays at a secluded sanitarium for a rest but it turns out to have a profound and disturbing effect on her
The stories are creepy and subtle, with little graphic gore in them. They tend to start out form a very realistic, but details increasing pile upon details leading to a final sting at the often enigmatic conclusions.
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