Tales of the Unexpected

Includes the story Poison, soon to be a short film from Wes Anderson on Netflix In this collection of stories, Dahl tantalizes, amuses, and sometimes terrifies readers about what lurks beneath the ordinary. - 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 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.