<b>Drawing on dark fantasy as well as horror and wild humor, ten contemporary authors pay homage to the gothic tale in original stories of the supernatural and the surreal.</b><br /> <br /> 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 within its peeling walls a grotesque secret. 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.<br /> <br /> With scary stories by:<br /> Joan Aiken<br /> M. T. Anderson<br /> Neil Gaiman<br /> Caitlín R. Kiernan<br /> Gregory Maguire<br /> Garth Nix<br /> Celia Rees<br /> Janni Lee Simner<br /> Vivian Vande Velde<br /> Barry Yourgrau