Penned by authors Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton, and more, the influential nineteenth- to twentieth-century stories within this distinguished compendium will frighten, bewilder, and delight. In Johann August Apel's "The Family Portraits," a young man confronts his family's sordid history of being murdered… by ghostly paintings. Edgar Allan Poe's "Ligeia" is a hauntingly elegant tale concerning the boundaries between life and death. Curl up to digest a story or two by the fireplace, but leave a few lights on… or you'll convince yourself you're seeing things in the dark!