The Penguin Book of the Undead

“The scariest stories you’ll read this Halloween were written 1,000 years ago. This wonderfully fun and creepy anthology, lovingly curated by Scott Bruce, … is ideal for anyone fond of zombies, ghosts, ghouls, ancient horrors, and dread warnings from beyond the grave… . Along with Penguin’s Book of Ghost Stories and Book of Witches, it completes a sort of trilogy of spookiness that is wickedly entertaining, accessible, and surprisingly informative.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

“A marvelous treasury of ghostdom. It’s exactly what I wanted to read. Scott Bruce has done a great job of assembling these accounts of the uncanny, and I know I shall keep it close by my bed for a long time.” —Philip Pullman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Golden Compass

“This exceptionally well-curated compilation shows that the wide variety of accounts of the undead have been rampant in literature long before the Gothic era… . Bruce has chosen selections from numerous cultures, including ancient Greece, Anglo-Norman England, and medieval Scandinavia… . He presents the contents with an enthusiasm that makes these … works accessible to the casual reader.” —Publishers Weekly

“It succeeds well as an education in how stories of wandering spirits have reflected throughout history common human anxieties about death, the disposal of mortal remains, and the fate of the soul [and] how these fears have changed through the ages and the ways in which otherworldly accounts have been used to address them.” —Library Journal

Scott G. Bruce is the editor of The Penguin Book of Hell, The Penguin Book of Dragons, and The Penguin Book of Demons, and the author of three books about the abbey of Cluny. He is a professor of history at Fordham University in New York City. He worked his way through college as a grave digger.

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