The Ghost Stories of M.R. James collects the tales that best
illustrate the author's quiet mastery of the ghost story form. Running
through each of these stories is a slowly escalating sense of unease and
dread, which ultimately shifts into the wildly uncanny. James'
characters exist in a world of ancient objects whose atrocious histories
begin to repeat when they are disturbed, and the blinkered repression
common to James' narratives only amplifies the shock of the spectral
appearance.