This anthology of anthologies contains H. H. Munro's excellent short stories, derived from a total of six compilations which were published over the course of twenty years. Containing all of his best regarded and famous short tales, as well as a sizeable host of hidden gems and lesser-known treasures, this gigantic compendium is comprehensive and certain to satisfy any fan of the author. The sensual, tantalising and distinctly moral nature of the stories usually rail against the stifling conventions of society - in the end, the natural world (and people acting naturally) tend to come out on top. The recognisable style with which Saki tells his tales make their endings, which are usually surprising and witty, a keynote feature of every story. Saki's ingrained wit and the casually biting nature of the topics he chooses often leads certain characters and the things they represent to ridicule, usually to the great satisfaction of the reader.

Saki was the pseudonym used by H.H. Munro (1870-1916), a British author and journalist who is best remembered for his short stories, which The Encyclopedia of Fantasy calls "witty, barbed and epigramatic." He wandered between the fanciful and the horrific, the urbane and the uncivilized with a grace that makes his work memoriable to all who have read it. The Happy Cat: Beasts, Super-Beasts, and Monsters is an expanded edition of his book of stories involving animals, and it includes one of his finest works, "Tobermory," in which a cat who had seen altogether too much scandal gains the power of speech. Other memoriable tales include "Laura," involving reincarnation and otters, and "The Story-Teller," in which the overly moral are devoured by wolves!

LEONARD BILSITER was one of those people who have failed to find this world attractive or interesting, and who have sought compensation in an "unseen world" of their own experience or imagination - or invention. Children do that sort of thing successfully, but children are content to convince themselves, and do not vulgarise their beliefs by trying to convince other people. Leonard Bilsiter's beliefs were for "the few," that is to say, anyone who would listen to him. His dabblings in the unseen might not have carried him beyond the customary platitudes of the drawing-room visionary if accident had not reinforced his stock-in-trade of mystical lore. In company with a friend, who was interested in a Ural mining concern, he had made a trip across Eastern Europe at a moment when the great Russian railway strike was developing from a threat to a reality; its outbreak caught him on the return journey, somewhere on the further side of Perm, and it was while waiting for a couple of days at a wayside station in a state of suspended locomotion that he made the acquaintance of a dealer in harness and metalware, who profitably whiled away the tedium of the long halt by initiating his English travelling companion in a fragmentary system of folk-lore that he had picked up from Trans-Baikal traders and natives.

""My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel," said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; "in the meantime you must try and put up with me.""

So begins "The Open Window" one of Saki's most famous stories. Saki, born Hector Hugh Munroe, wrote about characters with, sometimes, a sadistic cruel streak in them. It was his way of commenting on the people of Edwardian times. In doing so, he has sometimes been considered more macabre than Kipling.

For instance, in "The Open Window," Mr. Nuttel is sent to the country to recuperate from a nervous breakdown. When he meets the young lady of this tale, she tells him a story about how her uncles died. When the uncles arrive at the house, the delicate Mr. Nuttel runs away in horror. In "The Schartz-Metterklume Method" a woman believes that children should learn history by acting them out, but the event she chooses is rather inappropriate for children. "The Storyteller" is about a young man so irritated by obnoxious children on train that he decides to keep them quiet by telling them a story. Unfortunately, the story does not have a happy ending. . . .

This anthology of anthologies contains H. H. Munro's excellent short stories, derived from a total of six compilations which were published over the course of twenty years. Containing all of his best regarded and famous short tales, as well as a sizeable host of hidden gems and lesser-known treasures, this gigantic compendium is comprehensive and certain to satisfy any fan of the author. The sensual, tantalising and distinctly moral nature of the stories usually rail against the stifling conventions of society - in the end, the natural world (and people acting naturally) tend to come out on top. The recognisable style with which Saki tells his tales make their endings, which are usually surprising and witty, a keynote feature of every story. Saki's ingrained wit and the casually biting nature of the topics he chooses often leads certain characters and the things they represent to ridicule, usually to the great satisfaction of the reader.