It may be getting monotonous, but I can’t help it that Otto Penzler keeps editing massive anthologies of genre stories that are more fun than anything between soft covers.

The latest is The Big Book of Ghost Stories (Black Lizard). As with the others in the series (Big Book of Pulps, Big Book of Black Mask Stories, Zombies, Zombies, Zombies!), it tops out around 1000 pages and spans the decades from the 19th century to the very recent past.

Authors include Kipling, Saki, Willa Cather, O. Henry, Ramsey Campbell, Donald E. Westlake (who could write anything and make it sing) and Isaac Asimov, among many others. Authors who are still among the living - at least they seem to be - include Chet Williamson, H.R.F. Keating and the dreaded Joyce Carol Oates.

Horror fiction tends to go for the ooga-booga moment, dripping unearthly creatures from beyond the grave and such, but ghost stories require a more delicate touch. The vast majority of the stories here are creepy and beautiful.

A superior anthology.

In the Pipeline …

Emma Straub, a bookseller at BookCourt in Brooklyn, recently published her first novel, “Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures,” through Riverhead. The courtship seems to be ripening, as Lamont recently sold her second novel to Riverhead as well. it’s called “The Good Face,” and it’s about a family vacation to Spain … Daniel Wallace, author of “Big Fish,” which is currently being developed as a Broadway musical, has sold a new novel called “The Kings and Queens of Roam” to Touchstone. It’s about two sisters and “the dark legacy and magical town that binds them.”

It’s a good thing Ray Bradbury’s dead.

Mike Browning’s Word of the Week …

pandiculation: yawning and stretching

Quote Unquote …

“We’re all in this together - by ourselves.”

—- Lily Tomlin