Following a resurgence of interest in Daphne du Maurier’s writing, The Pathology of Desire in Daphne du Maurier’s Short Stories offers an overview of all her collections and a detailed reading of nine stories. These contain recurrent references to the incomplete or impaired human form and are best read through a corporeal lens. The criticism illustrates her importance as a cultural commentator fascinated by the results of frustrated human desire, and includes a synopsis of the published collections, and the stories within them, to give the reader a sense of the variety of the overarching themes and the persistent force of corporeality in the stories. Du Maurier is well-known as a novelist, but her short fiction is pivotal to understanding her position and influence as a writer. She rewrites fairytales and foregrounds female violence long before it became a cultural trend.

This book offers a detailed and thorough perspective on the psychological meanings of animals to human beings and on their role in the development of the human mind and its psychopathology. It presents a multitude of new observations on human interactions with animals.

Classic horror stories by one of masters of the form. Full of bone-chilling tales, this collection includes "The Birds," the basis for the Alfred Hitchcock film of the same title, and other creepy classics. Daphne du Maurier wrote some of the most compelling and creepy novels of the twentieth century. In books like Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, and Jamaica Inn she transformed the small dramas of everyday life—love, grief, jealousy—into the stuff of nightmares. Less known, though no less powerful, are her short stories, in which she gave free rein to her imagination in narratives of unflagging suspense. Patrick McGrath’s revelatory new selection of du Maurier’s stories shows her at her most chilling and most psychologically astute: a dead child reappears in the alleyways of Venice; routine eye surgery reveals the beast within to a meek housewife; nature revolts against man’s abuse by turning a benign species into an annihilating force; a dalliance with a beautiful stranger offers something more dangerous than a broken heart. McGrath draws on the whole of du Maurier’s long career and includes surprising discoveries together with famous stories like “The Birds.” Don’t Look Now is a perfect introduction to a peerless storyteller.