Born Of Man And Woman

Richard Matheson's early collection gathers stories of fear and the uncanny, many of them set in ordinary American homes and streets where something has quietly gone wrong. The title story is among the most unsettling: a young couple's child is not like other children, and the parents must decide how to live with what they have produced, hiding it away from a world that would not accept it. Other pieces move through familiar terrain of suburban life, strange transformations and the anxieties of the postwar years. Spare and direct in style, the stories show Matheson's gift for building dread out of small, believable details and for turning the everyday uncanny.