A superb storyteller who keeps his readers in thrall’?Statesman.

It is said that if the smell of the Himalayas creeps into a man’s blood, he will return to the hills again and again. Master storyteller Ruskin Bond shows how this love may persist to death and beyond. The agents of the supernatural may be gentle like the fairy folk in ‘On Fairy Hill’ or malevolent like the well-dressed diners of ‘The Prize’; humorous like the very proper witch, Miss Bellows, in ‘The Black Cat’ or tragic like the haunting Gulabi in ‘Wilson’s Bridge’. Bond aficionados will meet familiar faces in other stories and be thrilled by the gripping mystery, ‘Who Killed the Rani?’

This exciting collection, animated by the brooding presence of the Himalayas, establishes Bond as a connoisseur of the mysterious and macabre.