Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2797597 in Books
• Published on: 1986-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback

Customer Reviews

Stories that stay with you.
I was actually given this book in 1985, by my 5th-grade boyfriend, as a Christmas gift (which, in retrospect, is kinda creepy!). I was just barely 10 years old at the time, and I read the whole book cover to cover... It scared the living daylights out of me. Now, one might argue that it was because I was ten, but years later, I've re-read the book, and while not all of the stories held up altogether well, there are more than a couple that would still frighten any adult.

Even though Isaac Asimov does not in fact have any of his own writing in the collection, he's helped introduce and put together a fairly impressive bunch of creepy Christmas-themed horror stories. The first one, Ramsey Campbell's "The Chimney", is (in my opinion) the best of the lot - a story about a young boy who is terrorized by the idea of a man (Santa or not) sneaking down into his bedroom's fireplace, and who goes to ghastly measures to make sure such a thing doesn't happen.

Such are the other eleven tales in the book, done by a bevy of talented writers from all sorts of genres and eras. Robert Louis Stevenson's "Markheim" is featured, a tale about the murder of a curio dealer on Christmas day which is beautifully written and yet still manages to make one's flesh crawl whilst reading it. There are other well-loved authors in there, too - H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, Arthur C. Clarke, H. G. Wells... The list goes on. Each story is quite short, only a few pages long, which makes it an easy book to simply pick up for a brief taste of "creepy" during the holidays.

Despite it being a hard book to find nowadays, it's definitely worth picking up here on Amazon if you can. It's a deliciously creepy anthology, and it's perfect for those who don't like their Christmas TOO pretty and perfect. (There's also one called "The Twelve Crimes Of Christmas", if murder mysteries are more your thing.) With the array of authors and styles to each scary story, there'll be at least one tale in there that will stay with every reader, just like "The Chimney" has haunted me since I was 10.