In this deeply unsettling collection, Glen Hirshberg's remarkable ability to evoke the quiet terrors of everyday living renders the supernatural eerily natural. At once thrilling and moving, these four novellas and one story about people and the memories-and monsters-that haunt them cast a mesmerizing spell. Together, they represent a refreshingly human take on the age-old literary tradition of the ghost story.

The title story finds a husband struggling with the grief and confusion of losing two unborn children by forming an odd bond with the infant spectrals that visit him in the night. "Dancing Men" depicts one of the creepiest rites of passage in recent memory when a boy visits his reclusive and possibly deranged grandfather in the New Mexico desert. In "Mr. Dark's Carnival," a lonely college professor is lured to a mysterious haunted house steeped in the folklore of grisly badlands justice. "Struwwelpeter" introduces us to a brilliant, treacherous adolescent whose violent tendencies and reckless mischief reach a sinister pinnacle as Halloween descends on a rundown, Pacific Northwest fishing village. And in "Shipwreck Beach," a guilty and tormented young man and his favorite cousin confront their demons in the treacherous surf off the Hawaiian island of Lanai.

Introducing this collection, celebrated British horror writer Ramsey Campbell writes of Glen Hirshberg, "I'll stake my reputation that history will hail him as a crucial contributor to the field." Richly atmospheric, soulful, and scary, these stories will linger with readers long after they have finished reading.