Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural

I'm afraid the word Masterpieces has been a bit misused here. Though, doing to its length, this book does have a good selection of stories that do fit or at least come close to that. However it uses too many, in my opinion, of dated and just plain old stories, going back sometimes as far as the 1700's. This 600 page book could easily been shortened to 250 - 300 pages and then it may have been qualified to use the word masterpieces.

The book does offer a wide range of stories, from humorous fantasy (Craig Shaw Gardner's story "A Malady of Magics" to the outright horror of Robert Bloch, Bram Stoker and H. P. Lovecraft. It even ends with an original chapter from the Hobbit, which was afterward edited to fit The Lord of The Rings saga. All in all I did enjoy it, even though I had to wade through many stories that just didn't fit the superlative title.