Tales of the Unexpected

In this collection of stories, Dahl tantalizes, amuses, and sometimes terrifies readers into a sense of what lurks beneath the ordinary. Included in this collection are such notorious gems of the bizarre as "The Second Machine," "Lamb to the Slaughter," "Neck," and "The Landlady." Other stories explore: 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. "With the inventive power of a Thomas Edison and the imagination of a Lewis Carroll . . . Roald Dahl is a wizard of comedy and the grotesque, an artist with a marvelously topsy-turvy sense of the ridiculous in life." --Cleveland Plain Dealer