Book of Bargains

These are haunted tales of transactions gone catastrophically wrong. O'Sullivan, the American-born decadent who numbered Oscar Wilde among his friends, wrote these nine stories at the turn of the century with a cool precision that makes the supernatural almost polite, until it isn't. Each story presents a bargain: with the devil, with fate, with one's own desperate desires. The satisfaction is always guaranteed. The price is always more than expected. These aren't gothic thrillers with thunder and lightning; they're quieter, more insidious, their horror emerging from the careful parsing of contracts and the slow dawning recognition of what's been surrendered. O'Sullivan understands that the most disturbing bargains are the ones we enter into willingly, eyes wide open.