This illustrated edition gathers fifteen of Ambrose Bierce's most enduring short stories in a curated reading order that moves from the smoke and shock of his Civil War realism through ghost story, frontier horror, and weird tale to the cosmic and dreamlike. Bierce (1842 - c. 1914) - American journalist, satirist, Union Army officer, and author of The Devil's Dictionary - is widely regarded as a foundational figure of psychological horror and a key influence on Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, H. P. Lovecraft, and Robert W. Chambers, whose mythos borrowed names (Carcosa, Hali, the King in Yellow) that Bierce coined. The collection includes "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "Chickamauga," "A Horseman in the Sky," "Killed at Resaca," "One of the Missing," "A Resumed Identity," "The Boarded Window," "The Middle Toe of the Right Foot," "One Summer Night," "The Moonlit Road," "The Stranger," "Moxon's Master," "The Damned Thing," "The Death of Halpin Frayser," and "An Inhabitant of Carcosa." This Timeless Tome Publishers edition features an original critical introduction situating Bierce within American letters, fifteen original frontispiece illustrations by Riz Gab, period-appropriate typography, drop caps, ornamental scene breaks, and a fully linked table of contents.

The texts of the underlying stories are in the public domain; the compilation, selection, arrangement, illustrations, introduction, and design are original to this edition. Suitable for general adult readers and for academic study of American literature, Civil War fiction, and the development of weird and supernatural fiction in the late nineteenth century.