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Book reviews for "Bierce,_Ambrose" sorted by average review score:

Ambrose Bierce's Civil War
Published in Paperback by Regnery Publishing, Inc. (February, 1989)
Authors: William McCann and Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
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The Graphic Violence of War With Twists At The End
I read this book when I was doing research about one of the taboos of warfare. That was the discussion of the Coup De Grace of a fellow soldier. During my research I found that virtually no one had ever written (either in books or screenplays) about this with the exception of Bierce. It is an interesting paradox to ask yourself whether you would have the capability to put a friend out of their misery rather than let them suffer if you knew that help was not available. In fact, Bierce's short story is entitled, "The Coup De Grace". You'll find it and 27 others in this volume. The most famous is, "An Occurrence At Owl Creek". A story that was made into a short film and was the Short Subject winner of the Cannes Film Festival in 1962, and earned an Academy Award in 1964 as best Foreign Film.

All of the stories you find in this book are told with the tight, economical style of Bierce and many have an O'Henry or Sterling twist at the end. They are told in the frank and bloody prose that Bierce witnessed (and physically experienced) first hand as an Officer in the Union Army. As one reads these stories you can clearly see the basis for Bierce's caustic and acidulous writing style that stayed with him throughout his life including as a columnist for William Randolph Hearst at the San Francisco Examiner and until he walked away into the Mexican desert in 1913. His demise is the source of great conjecture (as he would have wanted it) but that is for other books about the man and his writing.

The best kept secret in American literature:
Ambrose Bierce, a soldier in the Civil War, focused on the war in many of his short stories, which are truly phenominal. With the surreal and supernatural sensibilities of Poe and ironic endings worthy of O. Henry, Bierce deserves a place among our most treasured authors.


Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (Short Story Index Reprint Series)
Published in Hardcover by Books for Libraries (December, 1991)
Author: Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
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An Excellent Collection of Stories!
I always wanted to get around to reading Ambrose Bierce. Known as an iconoclast and an excellent satirist, Bierce is best known for his Devil's Dictionary. He's also known for the disappearing act he pulled in Mexico in 1913. I decided to give this short anthology a chance. If I liked his stories, I figured I'd buy some more of his writings. I will be reading more of his writings.

The recent movie _The Blair Witch Project_ has brought scary stories back into vogue. After reading this book, I realized you can make a direct connection from this film to Ambrose Bierce. The connection would pass through Stephen King and H.P.Lovecraft along the way. I've seen things in both of these writers that could have been lifted directly out of one of Bierce's stories. In Bierce's story, "The Damned Thing", with its talk about colors that can and can't be seen, I could have sworn I was reading Lovecraft. Bierce is a master at quick twists and shocking violence, and delivers scares fast and furious. I got chills with several of these short stories, which certainly makes for good horror reading.

The book gives the reader a sample of Bierce's short stories. Most of the stories are tied around American Civil War themes, which is no surprise as Bierce served in the Union army during that conflict. His experiences gave him the necessary frame of reference to write these dark stories. And when I say dark, I mean DARK! Some of these tales will make your jaw drop. The violence in them is extremely unsettling. Chickamauga and Oil of Dog are sickening, describing blown open heads and dead babies in graphic detail.

Did I mention Bierce's prose? Some of the best you'll read. His prose is so amazing that I found myself rereading some of his passages just so I could make sure I was getting the full meaning. It is that rich and textured. It's also extremely funny in places. In the introduction it is written that Bierce lived in England for several years and was embraced by the English, who are masters not only of the language, but also insults. I'm not surprised when I look at how he writes. He can pen an insult that would bring tears of joy to an Englishman's eyes.

Finally, Bierce's stories show incredible depth for the short story format. He ridicules false courage, irony, lawyers, and even unions in the story, "The Revolt of the Gods". I highly recommend that anyone not familiar with Ambrose Bierce give this book a read. It reads fast and you'll laugh and be shocked within the space of one page. Good stuff.

Tales for Soldiers and Civilians
A young northern soldier unknowingly kills his confederate father; a man is about to be hanged for tampering with a bridge during the Civil War but is freed when the rope breaks; a civilian finds a snake under his bed and freezes; and an invisible presence brutally kills a man. These are all plotlines from a few of the stories in Bierce's magnificent collection of short stories Tales of Soldiers and Civilians and Other Stories. They are guaranteed to keep the reader in suspense and awaiting the always surprising conclusion. For anyone who loves great writing and irony, check out this collection of stories.


An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge
Published in Digital by Amazon Press ()
Author: Ambrose Bierce
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REALITY
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is an account of a Southern man who is about to be hanged. As he is awaiting his death, the imbecile believes he has escaped and is floating downstream. He dodges Yankee bullets left and right. This is the first place the reader says to himself, "RIGHT...." Many more imagined events occur. Once the man has magically reached shore, he travels day and night until he finds home. The book says that the man becomes very tired near nightfall which indicates that in reality the Confederate is now hanged. The story unsurprisingly ends with a dead man hanging from a rope with a broken neck. It doesn't take a genius to realize this will eventually happen. Overall? The book was fine. The style was ok. Ambrose was a weird guy...Poe was better... Peace from ZIMBABWE!! HAIL THE KING!

An eclipsing tale in suspense and suspension.
"An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge" is a book of incredible power and suspense. All the fears of a young father come to light as his life swings in and out of reality. As a captured Southern loyalist, the character is bound by the neck and to be hung, when his life, all that is to be, flashes before him. In a split second he pictures his break from the noose, his race to freedom, and his reunion with his beloved family. Life, to this man, is nothing but the dream he holds of his freedom.

I don't know nothing about this book cause I haven't read it
I haven't read it yet


Ambrose Bierce and the Death of Kings
Published in Paperback by Penguin USA (Mm) (30 July, 2002)
Author: Oakley M. Hall
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Second Bierce mystery not up to the quality of the first
I admire Ambrose Bierce's work above all other 19th century writers, with the exception of O. Henry. I enjoy visiting San Francisco. So when I saw that Oakley Hall had written a sequel to Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades, I was eager to read it. Unfortunately, it doesn't live up to the promise of the first book.

Bierce was a short story writer and biting satirist who wrote newspaper columns and generally made a public nuisance of himself in the latter half of the 19th century. A Civil War veteran, his writings on the war anticipate much of the disillusionment and despair that characterizes later writings by Viet Nam veterans. He also wrote a considerable body of horror and ghost stories that are more modern than you might expect. He disappeared in the Mexican Civil War in 1914, and his fate has never been determined reliably. The movie Old Gringo speculated on this, and others have done so. One theory had it that he'd written The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which anyone who'd read Bierce would know was highly unlikely. He despised novels.

So here we have the second of a series of novels about him. In the first there was motivation for him to get involved in the mystery, but here there isn't. Instead we have a missing Hawaiian princess, a dying Hawaiian king, and Bierce looking for said princess. There's no explanation of why Bierce is doing the looking, and no explanation of why his friend Tom Redmond decides to help. They just do. And there's also no suspense: it becomes obvious that she's gone of her own volition, and a friend tells them she's safe. Half of the book slides by before we finally get to some suspense.

An elderly Hawaiian judge is killed, and his rooms set on fire. Bierce and Redmond three-quarters of the book insisting they aren't interested in who killed him, and then are reluctantly drawn into figuring it out. It's mildly entertaining, but no where near as suspenseful or intricate as the first book.

Redmond, meanwhile, has recently lost his wife to illness, and romances a half-Hawaiian lady of considerable stature (over 6') who apparently likes him, but is determined to marry someone prosperous (Redmond's a mere reporter). Redmond accepts this, and it somehow robs the romance of whatever fire it would otherwise have.

There are scenes in restaurants, bars, houses, and the city jail, and all read believably, and interestingly. Bierce and the other characters are well-drawn, and interesting, and I enjoyed the character and atmosphere of the book. Unfortunately, there isn't much of a plot.

Hawaiian royalty, the Gay Nineties, and period atmosphere.
You can almost smell the literary mothballs as this very old-fashioned mystery, set in Gay Nineties San Francisco, unfolds and develops. Adhering faithfully to the tone and atmosphere of the time, and using much of the vocabulary and style of the period, Oakley Hall fills his pages with historical detail as he fleshes out a story of the death of King Kalakaua of Hawaii, including the rivalry for his throne, the influence of the sugar barons, and the pressure of the U.S. government for a lease on Pearl Harbor as a Pacific port. Despite the complex subject matter, Hall's style is surprisingly economical and restrained, and he advances the action quickly, presenting Ambrose Bierce, a real 19th century journalist and writer, as his clever, Holmes-like detective, with the narrator, Tom Redmond, as his much more sympathetic, Watsonian sidekick.

Old Hawaiian customs, sensitive issues of race and color, and America's imperialism all directly affect this plot, and Hall takes great care to depict these issues accurately. Unfortunately, the book gets bogged down in its own minutiae. Well over two dozen characters play roles here, some with similar names, and the reader, not knowing who may eventually become important in all the plots and subplots, must keep track of them all in order to understand the action. Additionally, the main plots regarding succession to the Hawaiian throne involve complex genealogies and political motivation, and there are innumerable subplots and digressions. These include the disappearance of a princess, mysterious and unavenged deaths from the past, blackmail and extortion, Haunani Brown's various love affairs, her search for information on her parentage, the women's suffrage movement, spiritualism and voodoo, white slavery, the introduction of leprosy and other diseases to the islands, and even a gay love connection in San Francisco, certainly enough to keep any reader fully occupied.

Still, if you are fascinated by Gay Nineties San Francisco and by Hawaiian history, this unusual mystery with its careful rendering of the atmosphere of the period should provide you with hours of pleasure. It is not quick or easy reading, but it is intriguing.

Well written, fun, and interesting mystery
It is near the end of the 19th century and America's destiny seems to compell it to reach further west, to the independent kingdom of Hawaii, already largely dominated by the descendents of white missionaries now turned merchants and sugar barons. The King of Hawaii is in San Francisco, dying without clear indication of the succession. When a Hawaiina princess vanishes, poet and newspaper columnist Ambrose Bierce is called upon to find her. Bierce, in turn, asks for help from his friend Tom Redmond, the novel's narrator.

From the start, it is clear that there is more than a missing person. Bierce and Redmond run into the woman's sufferage movement, spiritualism, and the powerful force of Hawaiian magic. When a Hawaiian judge is found murdered, Redmond finds himself under attack from Hawaiian magic.

Author Oakley Hall has created a delightful view of America at the turn of an earlier century. Bierce, with his cynical, yet somehow optimistic, view of the world, makes an effective sleuth, doomed to be disappointed by those he attempts to save. Negative historical attitudes toward women and persons of color are integrated into the story without apology yet without any sense of approval either.

As Bierce explains near the end of the novel, all of the clues are available to the reader. Even those mystery readers who guess the killer will enjoy Hall's smooth writing, the depth of historical detail, and the insights into an important historical/literary figure in Ambrose Bierce, turn of the 19th century America, and the end of the history of Hawaii as an independent country.

A well written and completely enjoyable novel.


The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce
Published in Hardcover by Doubleday (June, 1970)
Author: Ambrose Bierce
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bitter wit
Ambrose Bierce is as famous for the circumstances surrounding the end of his life as for his bitter fatalistic prose. Bierce was a journalist/author and a Civil War veteran. In 1913, after the breakup of his marriage and the death of his sons, he set out for Mexico to meet Pancho Villa and observe the Mexican Revolution at first hand. He wrote to a friend:

Goodbye, if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico--ah, that is euthanasia!

With that, he disappeared into Mexico and was never heard from again, fueling wild speculation about his fate (i.e., Carols Fuentes' novel The Old Gringo). A fitting end for an author whose works combined a bleak view of life with elements of mystery.

Bierce's Civil War stories are bleak little tales of death and destruction. There's one here that nicely captures his cynical world view--most of us saw a film version of it in grade school--An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Peyton Farquhar is a Southern planter captured behind Union lines on a spy mission. As the story opens, he stands upon Owl Creek Bridge with a noose around his neck thinking of the wife and children he will never see again. But when the Union soldiers try to hang him, the noose slips and he swims off downstream. He flees across country until he finally reaches home and as he approaches his open armed wife...the rope snaps tight and we realize that he had imagined the whole episode on his way down. Here in one tidy package is the brutality of war, the futility of life and the bitter wit that characterizes his work.

He's not for all tastes, and I'm not generally big on short stories, but I like him.

GRADE: B

I suppose this must be death
Ambrose Bierce's most famous story is An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and many of his stories follow that same kind of pattern: an event is related with some surprising or revelatory twist at the end. The stories of the Civil War are especially interesting as they are not at all typical writings about war. Bierce does not see the battle so much as one of North against South rather he sees the war as the child sees the war in his story Chickamauga, his attitude is one combining fascination at the spectacle and utter disgust. Life is an unresolved jumble of confused forces and mixed emotions for everyone in Bierce's haunting tales that read like dreams but dreams informed by much contact with reality as Bierce was wounded twice(once in the head)in the war he describes. The descriptions of Civil War battles are told with great precision(and alone make this volume worth having) though there is always an additional element to make them more than war reportage, Bierce turns his accounts into stories because he sees through all the cannon smoke to the small detail which encapsulates the essential thing about an event. In one of my favorites, Killed at Resaca, a courageous captain gallops across a field to deliver a crucial message only to find the field is impassable because of a deep gully, instead of turning around however he merely waits for the enemy to shoot him. Going through his personal things a fellow soldier, the narrator of the story, finds a letter which explains this resolve. The letter reads:"...I could bear to hear of my soldier- lover's death, but not of his cowardice." Later, when the narrator has a chance to return the letter to its author he is asked by her how her soldier-lover died. "He was bitten by a snake,"is the narrators reply. Bierce's pen was dipped in wormwood and acid said H.L. Mencken. His stories of soldiers and civilians are told with a bitter and venomous clarity. His humor was always of the sort aquainted with the gallows. He said at age 71,"I am so old I am ashamed to be alive." And so he rode off to Mexico. It's hard to imagine Stephen Crane existing without the example of Ambrose Bierce just as it is hard to imagine Bierce without Poe. What a strange tradition of independents we have.

Civil War Survivor and Damn Good Author
Ambrose Bierce was the one of the 2 writers of major significance to fight in and survive the Civil War (the other being Sidney Lanier). He was bitter to begin with, but the experience changed him into an even more cynical man. An eloquent writer, his best subject is fear: his ghost stories are dark and spooky - the civil war stories are as well, but with the added horror of a very real war and fear of battle. "Chickamauga" is one of my favorites - Bierce was actually at the battle but the story is fictional, and adds a supernatural angle to an infamous time and place. His writings are ghostly and vivid tales of America in the mid 19th century. The horrific experiences encountered in his tales are both real and imagined. If you are a ghost story fan or an American history/Civil War buff, you'll enjoy Bierce.


Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company
Published in Hardcover by Crown Pub (February, 1996)
Author: Roy, Jr. Morris
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A momentum-gaining insight into a man for all eras
While early on the book lagged, it built momentum to the point where I had a hard time putting it down. Examining the circumstances that produced this complicated individual proved fascinating and heartbreaking. Outside events and Bierce himself conspired to find misery and disappointment at every turn. The book is sympathetic to Bierce, but not fawning- he's not praised as a great writer, but he is acknowledged to be the best writer among Civil War veterans. His newspaper columns are also praised, and the erosion of his patriotism after what he saw in the war (not just at Shiloh) is something that can be best understood by post Vietnam-era readers. Many of the cited quotes (particularly the bitingly critical ones) contain a sharp wit that can't be missed. I enjoyed the book and it encouraged me to read more about the era. Bierce was in many ways a forerunner of Walter Winchell (read Neal Gabler's great bio) and you can also see traces of modern observational humorists such as George Carlin. Piece of advice, though- don't tell anyone that they remind you of Bierce!

An illuminating & useful biography
Ambrose Bierce was similar to J.R.R. Tolkien in one respect: traumatized by the horrors of war at a very young age. Bierce got his baptism of fire in the Civil War, especially at Shiloh, while Tolkien got his in World War I, especially at the battle of the Somme.

The two authors reacted in very different ways. Bierce apparently made an instant decision to hate the human race, and held that course for the rest of his days, while Tolkien apparently realized that the question of Evil had been raised for him, in terms for which his culture provided no sufficent answer. Tolkien's response was more interesting than Bierce's.

Bierce was a very witty and intelligent man, but he did devote most of his remaining years to venomous journalism of the worst sort, becoming widely known as the most fearsome Acid Pen in San Francisco. He had a disastrous marriage, was an extremely poor parent, and suffered the unimaginable pain of learning that his son had committed suicide at a very young age in a quarrel over a girl. His literary production was highly uneven (as was Mark Twain's) and it seems likely that he will go down in history for "The Devil's Dictionary" (where you will find that his definition for the word "alone" was "in bad company."

Quite a piece of work, this Ambrose Bierce. The biography is a good one.

Definative Bio of Bierce
This book gives insight into one of the American literary greats. There are times that the book drags, but I think this is due as much to the author as to the fact that some moments in Bierce's life are so interesting that when you read about the "average" moments in his life, you are left, well , bored. This is a good book for a Bierce fan or someone that would like to learn about an American writer who, deservedly, lived in the shadow of Twain.


Ghost and Horror Stories of Ambrose Bierce
Published in Hardcover by Gannon Distributing Co (January, 1986)
Authors: E. F. Bleiler and Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
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unfinished mastery
let me first say: some of these stories are truly great. the collection clearly shows great imagination, great writing, and a vide variety of original stories. yet, there is something... I don't know. many of the stories seem so unfinished. too abrupt, too short, too lame descriptions. again and again stories seem to lack one quality, destroying it, or simply having just a little bit to little to recommend it. i don't know. just didn't quite get into it i guess. perhaps it's just me.

Careful - it bites
Bierce ranks with Poe and Lovecraft as one of the greatest American writers of horror stories. This collection presents a selection of his supernatural tales, leaving out the Civil War stories for which he is perhaps better known. The first story, "The Death of Halpin Frayser", is a genuine nightmare, and well worth the price of the volume on its own. But the book also includes Bierce's genre-bending experiments with science fiction, "Moxon's Master" and "The Damned Thing"; the cynical Rashomon precursor "The Moonlit Road"; the apocalyptic "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" and "The Eyes of the Panther", a lycanthrope story (maybe) which grows more unsettling the more you think about it, as well as a number of minor works which may be hard to find elsewhere. The only real flaw is E F Bleiler's sanctimonious introduction, which seems to attempt to escape the satiric snap of Bierce's work by repeating unpleasant (and largely unreliable) opinions of the writer. Watch out for this book - even the cover is scary.

Ambrose Bierce's Ghost and Horror Stories
This book should be considered a classic for all that it offers (and for such an unbelievably low price!) Better than today's masters of macabre, Bierce goes deep into the mind of macabre. His stories make you contemplate the truth of the existence of what he writes about. If you want truly "deep" horror, I would highly suggest the works of Bierce and this book is a great place to start.


The Civil War Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce
Published in Paperback by Univ of Nebraska Pr (March, 1988)
Authors: Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce and Ernest Jerome Hopkins
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Wars Were Brutal Long Before TV Discovered Them
No matter what it is called, be it the Civil War, the War Between the States or the War of Southern Secession, the time period 1861-65 was one of the most bloody, destructive and emotionally and ideologically charged periods in U.S. history. No author had a better grasp of it than Union comabt veteran Ambrose Bierce, whose stories in this short but riveting collection are not dry historical abstractions nor a cold analysis of the decisions of senior leaders, but a graphic record of the everday sweat, endless terror and cruel, surreal absurdity of armed conflict. From the eerie "Incident at the Owl Creek Bridge" to the gripping "Parker Adderson, Philosopher," Bierce honed the unique literary and expressive skills that served him well as a corrosive and controversial San Francisco newspaper columnist and astonishingly effective writer on horror and the occult. War to "Bitter Bierce" was the purest expression of the basic animal survival instinct; hardened and warped by endless fear, by the power of technological advances in weaponry and the stress and repeated brutality that turned ordinary human beings into ruthless killers--to the point where ideology and the color of the uniform no longer mattered. Bierce's experiences and deep cynicism led him to believe that human beings could do nothing but create meaningless tragedies. "War is a byproduct of the arts of peace," he was reported to have said, but these stories, a product of a bygone era, remain curiously contemporary because they tell us about everyday people--not unlike ourselves despite more than a century of difference--who fought a war, that, in light of the issues it raised and the forces it unleashed, has never really ended


Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades
Published in Mass Market Paperback by Penguin USA (Paper) (31 January, 2000)
Author: Oakley M. Hall
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Please don't compare this with The Alienist
To start, I liked this book, but not as much as I hoped to like it. It is a nice historical mystery, but it is not in the league of The Alienist, a work to which it is often compared. The narrator, Tom Redmond, is a likeable character, but just as he is confused with the many characters in this mystery, so is the reader.

The story searches for the Morton Street Slasher, but the reader who wants a plot similar to the Alienist (which follows the trail of the killer) will be disappointed to learn that this book is more about mining and railroad politics than the search for a killer. If you are interested in the backroom politics of San Francisco in the 1870's or really love the wit of Ambrose Bierce, then you'll probably love this book ... if you're like me, and you like Ambrose Bierce's dark humor but could do without the smoke-filled rooms, then you'll just find it an interesting diversion.

Ambrose Bierce, writer, curmudgeon, detective?
Using Ambrose Bierce as the detective in this mystery novel set in 1880's San Francisco is a clever concept. Acerbic and fiercely intelligent, Bierce makes a good protagonist. Told from the perspective of a young reporter, Ambrose Bierce and The Queen of Spades may be a bit convoluted as a mystery but as a look at a California that was in the control of the railroad industry it excels. Starting each chapter with a selection of Bierce's Devil's Dictionary sets the tone for the book well, and this a solid addition to the historical mystery genre.

Entertaining, informative hystery\mistory
This book tells the story of young Tom Redmond, apprentice to the famous (or infamous, depending on how you look at it) Ambrose Bierce. Redmond and Bierce try to track down a Ripper-style killer of prostitutes and unravel a mystery that has ties to the California Gold Rush and the Railroad boom in California. All in all, the history is good (and you'll probably learn a good bit if you know nothing about mining or railroads) and the mysteries provide a nice little puzzle. Despite the title, Bierce is not the main character, Redmond is, and he's quite an interesting, well-developed and sympathetic one. Bierce is kind of a secondary character, although the book is peppered with his acerbic, sarcastic thinking (one of the things I enjoyed most of all, actually). This book is less Holmes-and-Watson than Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, which is a more satisfying arrangement, I think. I enjoyed it and I think most people who like historical mysteries will enjoy it also.


The Moonlit Road and Other Ghost and Horror Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)
Published in Paperback by Dover Pubns (May, 1998)
Author: Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
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A Good Bargain For Your Buck
This is my first experience with Bierce's works, and I thought this book was pretty good for it's price. I really didn't think that any of these stories were scary or horrifying in any way, but some of them were interesting. I thought that some of the longer tales resembled Poe's with the sometimes unwanted droning of needless descriptive and large words. But, I would reccomend this book if you are a fan of Poe. I thought this book was a good bargain, since it is cheaper than a cup of coffee these days. So, I encourage you to take a look at it. It's a pretty good read, and what else can you buy for this price today?

Something for the reading around the campfire....
This small book contains 12 of Ambrose Bierce's short stories (The Eyes of the Panther, The Moonlit Road, The Boarded Window, The Man and the Snake, The Secret of Macarger's Gulch, The Middle Toe of the Right Foot, A Psychological Shipwreck, A Holy Terror, John Bartine's Watch, Beyond the Wall, A Watcher by the Dead, and Moxon's Master). The stories cover ghosts, revenge, and otherworldly messages. This is by no means a definitive collection of Bierce's work, but it is a good, inexpensive introduction.

The stories are short and do not go into intense detail and background. These are compact and complete enough to be told around the campfire or just around the living room with the lights turned out. Bierce knows his reader and will often give the ending an unexpected twist.

Worth the read
This book showcases the fine writing talents of Ambrose Bierce, famous for his "Devil's Dictionary" among other things. These ghost stories are very fine and show a lot of thought and imagination. The title story in particular is extemely powerful in its perspective changes and genuine feeling of sadness experienced by the characters. I recommend this book and edition wholeheartedly.


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