Thank you to member Joe Bandel's scholarship and devotion to this forgotten master of occult horror for rendering these stories into English (many of them for the first time). In addition to the short fictions, the book also includes Bandel's translation of Ewers' gorgeous essay on Edgar Allan Poe and several sample chapters from the novel, Alraune (we hope to have the whole thing soon!).

At this point there is nothing available, for those of modest means, by Heinz Hanns Ewers. If you have enjoyed the occult horror stories of Arthur Machen, and the sickly decadent tales of Poe, Jean Lorrain, M. P. Shiel and Joris Huysmans, you should be well pleased with Ewers, who was the real thing. ( )

I have been delaying this review because I haven't been sure exactly what to say it about it. First, let me say, I greatly enjoyed it and will undoubtedly read it repeatedly in the future. The problem is the difficulty in assigning words to describe the spirit of Ewers’s work. The short stories making up the first half of the book are amazing. They start off with The Spider, my favorite of the lot. It made my skin crawl and my hair stand on end. Now admittedly, I am arachnophobic, but I believe my reaction was the result of being in the mind of a character who is slowly be drawn into the fatal web. The following stories were equally atmospheric and darkly enjoyable. They got stranger and stranger (in a good way). I would rank them just below Edgar Allen Poe’s tales, a place that Ewer himself would have most likely deemed appropriate considering the second portion of this book consists of an essay on Poe, his life and his works. With unapologetic honesty and well deserved esteem, Ewers celebrates a true master of the genre. Well expressed and straight forward, he speaks his mind concerning the slights on Poe’s character that occur all too often when the brilliance of his words should be the ultimate measure of his greatness. I recommend this book to fans of Poe and the short horror story genre in general. I would also like to thank Joe Bandel for bringing Hanns Heinz Ewers out of the shadows, great job. ( )

This book must be purchased over the internet through Lulu.com and is the first in the complete series. It is available as a hard bound book or quality paperback. ( )