Tales of Men and Ghosts is a collection of eerie and compelling stories from the masterful pen of Edith Wharton. Set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century New York society, these tales delve into themes of love, betrayal, and the supernatural.

Wharton's writing is as sharp and incisive as ever, drawing the reader into a world filled with secrets and hidden desires. From haunted houses to spectral apparitions, each story is crafted with a careful attention to detail that creates a sense of unease and suspense.

Although some of the stories may be considered dated by modern standards, the underlying themes of human nature and the unknown still resonate with readers today. Wharton's ability to blend the mundane with the supernatural is what makes Tales of Men and Ghosts a timeless classic that continues to captivate and chill readers to this day.

Book Description:
Tales of Men and Ghosts was published as a collection in 1910, though the first eight of the stories had earlier appeared in Scribner's and the last two in the Century Magazine. Despite the title, the men outnumber the ghosts, since only "The Eyes" and "Afterward" actually call on the supernatural. In only two of the stories are women the central characters, though elsewhere they play important roles. Wharton enjoys subjecting her subjects -- all of them American gentlemen and gentlewomen, in the conventional senses of the word -- to various moral tests and sometimes ironic tests. Some of the stories deal with the intellectual fashions of the day -- "The Blond Beast" basing itself, to some degree, on Nietzsche, and "The Debt" on variants of Darwinism. Though "Afterward" is set in England, and "The Letters" in France, the rest of the stories are squarely in Wharton's own New York city, rather than (say) in what she calls "the soul-deadening ugliness of the Middle West," thus avoiding the need to come to terms with what fashion-conscious New Yorkers still today call "fly-over country" for everything that lies between the west bank of the Hudson River and San Francisco Bay.