Tales of the Unexpected

In this collection of stories, Dahl tantalizes, amuses, and sometimes terrifies readers into a sense of what lurks beneath the ordinary. Included in this collection are such notorious gems of the bizarre as -The Second Machine, - -Lamb to the Slaughter, - -Neck, - and -The Landlady.-
Other stories explore: A wine connoisseur with an infallible palate and a sinister taste in wagers. A decrepit old man with a masterpiece tattooed on his back. A voracious adventuress, a gentle cuckold, and a garden sculpture that becomes an instrument of sadistic vengeance. Social climbers who climb a bit too quickly. Philanderers whose deceptions are a trifle too ornate. Impeccable servants whose bland masks slip for one vertiginous instant.
With the inventive power of a Thomas Edison and the imagination of a Lewis Carroll...Roald Dahl is a wizard of comedy and the grotesque, an artist with a marvelously topsy-turvy sense of the ridiculous in life.- -Cleveland Plain Dealer