This is a well-chosen anthology. If it is inconsistent in quality, the problem is not to be found in Joshi's choices, but in the decline of supernatural fiction during the latter part of the 20th century. The older stuff is the best. Irving's "German Student" is nothing more than a campfire story for boy scouts, and not really a very good one at that. The Hawthorne tale about Randolph's portrait is better, but not exactly gripping. Then comes Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," and--not havi...

Excellent group of tales to be read. I enjoyed myself so much reading these. I should look for some more of these type of books.

An eclectic selection of short stories with varying styles and effect. Most of them do adhere to the tradition of the weird tale and cosmic horror, with some stories being more mundane and ordinary. It is well and good to bring the abstract cosmic horror to the ground, but it's necessary to not shatter it in the process. The tendency of the later stories to bring the horror out of the mundane does not work consistently. Generally however most the stories are good, some are great. Some are unread...

"A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain - a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of umplumbed space." Thus spake S. T. Joshi as to what qualifies as a tale of the supernatural.Ame...

Excellent anthology of fine horror stories. If you want to get into horror you definitely should start here: Washington Irving, Poe, Lovecraft, Klein, Leiber, King... there are many big names with their stories in here starting with Irving as one of the earliest authors in horror and ending with Caitlin Kiernan. The stories are from classic to pulp fiction to more science fiction orientated horror. Sometimes the science fiction share in the stories was a bit too strong for me (I prefer classic h...

Full of great dark emotional twists. Easily a collection I’ll be coming back to.

Review: http://bennitheblog.com/bookbiters/am...American Supernatural Tales collects twenty-six short stories by American authors organized in chronological order, from Washington Irving’s 1824 tale, “The Adventure of the German Student,” to Caitlín R. Kiernan’s 2000 tale, “In the Water Works (Birmingham, Alabama 1888). This collection was edited by S. T. Joshi, and the 2013 reissue of this book as part of the Penguin Horror series also includes an introduction by Guillermo Del Toro.In the intro...

As with all compilations there's going to be some great ones and some duds. I did find that there was only a couple stories I didn't care for and they were more towards the 2nd half of this book. That being said that means they were from the more recent authors as this book has it's tales listed chronologically by year. Guess that means I prefer the older scary stories and that hardly suprises me seeing as how I adore HP Lovecraft and Poe but can't stand Stephen King. Still a great collection ov...

"That's life for you," said MacDunn. "Someone always waiting for someone who never comes home. Always someone loving some thing more than that thing loves them. And after a while you want to destroy whatever that thing is, so it can't hurt you no more." - The Fog Horn. Ray Bradbury.A collection of American supernatural tales ranging from the years 1824 to 2000. Ghosts and elder gods and vampires and demons... oh my!This collection was a really interesting read, I really liked how the stories are...

[Note: Originally published in 2007 as part of Penguin Classics series editions; republished with introduction by series editor Guillermo del Toro.]Naturally, I've already read a number of these over the years, some, like "The Fall of the House of Usher," so long ago (middle school!) that they certainly merit rereading. Stories which I've reviewed on goodreads already are hyperlinked.The adventure of the German student / Washington Irving -- Edward Randolph's portrait / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Th...

'It upset me to see how little I've actually read, how far I still have to go. So many obscure authors, so many books I've never come across...' A beautifully collected book full of hidden gems that I enjoyed and some I skimmed over. There is something for every horror enthusiast in this book of American Supernatural Tales.

S.T. Joshi has presented a good collection of strange tales from American fiction. It gives one a taste of what there is and what you will find if you seek it out.This collection only touched the tip of the iceberg of great American weird fiction.

If you are looking for a collection of "supernatural"/horror short stories, look no further. This was a solid sampling of stories from some of the genre's best authors. I was so excited to dive into this one to not only read selections from some of my favorite authors, but also to discover some of the other greats that I hadn't read before. As with any collection, there were some stories that I enjoyed more than others, but for the most part, I really liked what I read and even found a few new f...

Some great stories and some mediocre ones average out to an acceptable but disappointing overview of the American supernatural tradition. Includes an extensive historical introduction and biographical notes for each author, which is nice, but which all reflect Joshi's usual partisan blind spots, which is less nice.Joshi opens by noting that the supernatural genre emerges in the 18th century as science delineated what is natural and what is beyond rational bounds (there's that liminality again).

Gorgeous, gorgeous edition. I'd have bought the Lovecraft volume too, except I have all those stories already. So much pretty printed paper.

I usually find horror fiction sort of pathetic, but this cherry-picking of two centuries is varied, trend-setting, often golden. Hawthorne, Poe, Bloch, Matheson, Oates. I have no patience for Lovecraft and his legion. The phases: High Gothic to Pulp to magic realism to splatterpunk, blessedly omitting the most recent and hypersuccessful form, urban fantasy / paranormal romance. Henry James’ prose is every bit as clotted and unpronounceable as reputed. High point (apart from Poe’s ‘House of Usher...

This is a very impressive collection indeed. It begins with "The Adventure of the German Student" by Washington Irving (0riginally published in 1824) and ends with "In the Water Works (Birmingham, Alabama 1888) by Caitlin R. Kiernan (originally published in 2000), and covers a lot of stories from various authors in between: Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Thomas Ligotti, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, David

"To learn what we fear is to learn who we are." What is horror exactly? Is it in details of a tale by the fireside? Is it the unseen, the unnatural? Or is it in the details left out? Has supernatural become its only trope? Or does it in fact hide within our minds? Waiting for our beliefs to crumble, so it can seize control of our petrified beings? While I was reading this book, I found myself wondering about these and many more questions. After all that's what horror does best..makes one ques

A good primer for me, so uncultured in American Literature (really: I'd never read anything by Nathaniel Hawthorne, HP Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, etc, etc). A lot of the stories are merely so-so, with two notable exceptions:Shirley Jackson's the Visit and T.E.D. Klein's The Events at Poroth Farm. The former's a subtle but psychologically f'ed up "why is this scary" story - I hate conversations where characters appear not to hear each other at all, so CREEPY! The latter scared the shitting shit

Some of these stories made me roll my eyes so far back in my head that they just did a complete 360 degree rotation in my eye socket.This disproportionate nature of stories from people of color and women speaks volumes to the priorities American (read: Western) literature favors. A good introduction overall to some less popular authors while reinforcing why the popular authors are so famous (Poe, Jackson, King). It’s a disservice to put them in an anthology with some seriously ridiculous prose.