Tales of the Unexpected

A wine connoisseur with an infallible palate and a sinister taste in wagers. A decrepit old man with a masterpiece tattooed on his back. A voracious adventuress, a gentle cuckold, and a garden sculpture that becomes an instrument of sadistic vengeance. Social climbers who climb a bit too quickly. Philanderers whose deceptions are a trifle too ornate. Impeccable servants whose bland masks slip for one vertiginous instant.

In these deliciously nasty stories an internationally acclaimed practitioner of the short narrative works his own brand of black magic: tantalizing, amusing, and sometimes terrifying readers into a new sense of what lurks beneath the ordinary. Included in Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected are such notorious gems of the bizarre as "The Sound Machine," "Lamb to Slaughter," "Neck," and "The Landlady."

Contents: - Taste - Lamb to the Slaughter - Man from the South - My Lady Love, My Dove - Dip in the Pool - Galloping Foxley - Skin - Neck - Nunc Dimittis - Landlady - William and Mary - Way Up to Heaven - Parson's Pleasure - Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat - Royal Jelly - Edward the Conqueror - Sound Machine - Georgy Porgy - Hitchhiker - Poison - The Boy Who Talked with Animals - The Umbrella Man - Genesis and Catastrophe - The Butler