A collection of short fiction from the 19th century on the topic indicated by the title, this volume is often tedious, occasionally thrilling, once or twice actually disgusting, but almost always well-written, with a flair that only Victorians tend to possess. Many of the stories include a surprise "twist" ending, and nearly all of them would be pleasantly at home in Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone (one of them, Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," was).

The volume includes:

"The Adventure of the German Student" by Washington Irving
"El Verdugo" by Honore de Balzac
"The Story of the Greek Slave" by Captain Marryat
"The Iron Shroud" by William Mudford
"Schalken the Painter" by J. Sheridan LeFanu
"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe
"The Doom of the Griffiths" by Mrs. Gaskell
"Circumstance" by Harriet Prescott Spofford
"Torture By Hope" by Villiers de L'Isle-Adam
"The Diamond Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant
"The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes" by Rudyard Kipling
"Markheim" by Robert Louis Stevenson
"Sleepyhead" by Anton Chekov
"His Unconquerable Enemy" by W.C. Morrow
"The Gravedigger's Daughter" by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce
"Vengance" by Lorimer Stoddard
"Desiree's Baby" by Kate Chopin
"The Squaw" by Bram Stoker
"A Dreadful Night" by Edwin L. Arnold
"The Dead Valley" by Ralph Adams Cram
"Pollock and the Porroh Man" by H.G. Wells
"The Story of the Brazilian Cat" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"The Dead Smile" by F. Marion Crawford
"A Game of Chess" by Robert Barr ( )