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 doppelganger 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.