Elizabeth Gaskell''s chilling Gothic tales blend the real and the supernatural to eerie, compelling effect. ''Disappearances'', inspired by local legends of mysterious vanishings, mixes gossip and fact; ''Lois the Witch'', a novella based on an account of the Salem witch hunts, shows how sexual desire and jealousy lead to hysteria; while in ''The Old Nurse''s Story'' a mysterious child roams the freezing Northumberland moors. Whether darkly surreal, such as ''The Poor Clare'', where an evil doppelg-er is formed by a woman''s bitter curse, or mischievous like ''Curious, if True'', a playful reworking of fairy tales, all the stories in this volume form a stark contrast to the social realism of Gaskell''s novels, revealing a darker and more unsettling style of writing.
