Stranger: Dark Tales of Eerie Encounters

. Harper Perennial, $14.99 (400pp) ISBN 978-0-06-105245-3

Michele Slung, an accomplished editor whose past books include I Shudder at Your Touch and Murder & Other Acts of Literature, has selected stories that muse on the matter of unfamiliar faces from eight decades of creepy fiction in Stranger: Dark Tales of Eerie Encounters. In addition to the usual suspects Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, even Patricia Highsmith there are pleasant (and very literary) surprises: contributions from Shirley Jackson, Mark Helprin and Edith Wharton.

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