Madam Crowl's Ghost is a collection of twelve of the finest stories by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu, an acknowledged master of psychological suspense. The author's pedigree in this genre is undoubted; his novel Carmella was the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula, and he is widely regarded as the father of the Irish gothic style. As consistently unsettling as they are rewarding, the pleasure with which his stories of the supernatural have been read and re-read has made le Fanu's reputation all the more darkly glittering over time.