"Get ready to sleep with the lights on!" — GIRLS' LIFE

A lovesick count and the ghost of his brutalized servant . . . a serial killer who defies death . . . a house with a violent mind of its own and another that holds a grotesque secret within its peeling walls. Here are witches who feast on faces, changeling rites of passage, a venerable vampire

contemplating his end, and a fanged brat who drains the patience of a bumbling teenage boy. Here too are a flamboyant young novelist in search of a subject more compelling than his own eerie existence and

the daughter of a sorcerer fighting to free her lover — and her will — from sinister bonds. Enter the world of GOTHIC!, a celebration of the literary form made famous by such writers as Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe.

With chilling stories by:

Joan Aiken

M. T. Anderson

Neil Gaiman

Caitlín R. Kiernan

Gregory Maguire

Garth Nix

Celia Rees

Janni Lee Simner

Vivian Vande Velde

Barry Yourgrau