Tales for a Stormy Night

Yuri Rasovsky has created a wonderful anthology that includes gothic tales and dramatic adaptations with music by William Walton. The diversity and pleasure of these 14 selections are matched by the vocal talents of the 20-plus voices. There are seven single-voiced stories by authors Henry James ("The Ghostly Rental," read by Robertson Dean), Edith Wharton ("Kerfol," read by Ann Marie Lee), H.P. Lovecraft ("The Terrible Old Man," read by James Otis), Ambrose Bierce ("Oil of Dog," read by James Otis), Guy de Maupassant ("The Horla," read by Kristoffer Tabori), Lafcadio Hearn ("Hoichi the Earless," read by Lorna Raver), and Robert Louis Stevenson ("The Body Snatcher," my favorite of the batch, rendered with creepy composure by Dwight Schultz). Multivoiced performances enriched with sound effects enliven the collection, too. The highlight of this group is the playful black comedy "Tobermori" by H.H. Munro (which features an unbilled vocal cameo by Rasovsky as the title character). By embracing multiple genres and tones, performance styles, and national literatures, this audio Pandora's box consistently stimulates, surprises, satisfies, and even stretches our sense of what an audiobook can be. G.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine