All the Fear of the Fair: Uncanny Tales of Circus and Sideshow

All the Fear of the Fair gathers 16 uncanny stories set among circuses, fairgrounds, sideshows and other spaces of theatrical danger. The collection brings together tales of conjurers, puppeteers, beast tamers, waxworks, dummies, Ferris wheels and crowds drawn towards spectacle and violence.

Edited by Edward Parnell, the anthology spans more than a century of weird fiction, from Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Hop-Frog’ to Robert Aickman’s ‘The Swords’. Its contributors include Ray Bradbury, Gerald Kersh, Margery Lawrence, L. P. Hartley and Charles Birkin. Each story is accompanied by an individual introduction, with Parnell also providing a general introduction to the collection.