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Rating: 
Summary: a compilation of horror classics
Review: 41 classic tales of horror and the supernatural are presented in 599 pages by the editors Pronzini, Malzberg, and Greenberg in two sections:
Grandmasters -
- Poe [Hop Frog], Stoker [The Squaw], Bierce, Faulkner, Sturgeon, and others including Winston Churchill [Man Overboard].
Modern Masters -
- Hunter [The Scarlet King], Wagner [Sticks], Russell, Kornbluth, Sheckley, and others including Stephen King [The Crate], who also provides a nine-page Introduction in which he writes:
"If [this book] proves anything, it proves that the tale of horror and/or the supernatural is serious, is important, is necessary... not only to those human beings who read to think, but to those vast numbers of readers who read to feel".
Rating: 
Summary: An amazing array of talent between two covers
Review: It's hard to imagine a better collection of horror stories, with chilling tales by Edgar Allen Poe, Bram Stoker, H.P. Lovecraft, William Faulkner, Truman Capote, and a host of more modern authors, including Joyce Carol Oates and the Michael Jordan of horror writing, Stephen King (King also writes an introduction). This book is special because it pays homage to one of the pulpiest of pulp genres, horror, and combines it with a span of authors who have a significant literary pedigree. By presenting stories that are cerebral as well as scary, and by giving classic authors such as Poe their due, the book might be slightly less accessible to someone who has grown up equating horror writing with, say, early works by Dean Koontz. But anyone who goes into this collection with an open mind is sure to be blown away by the horror- the sheer horror- of it all.
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