Jane de La Vaudère was one of the most unusual writers of the fin de siècle, renowned both for her scandalously scabrous Parisian novels, and her accounts of moeurs antiques, some of which--notably Le Mystère de Kama (1901)--set new standards of excess.Presented here is her first volume of short stories to be available in English, superbly translated by Brian Stableford: nine extravagant tales of hypnotism and magic, reincarnation and vengeance, animal tamers and necrophilia. Sublimely Gothic, exquisitely hallucinatory, these strange, fatalistic pieces by La Vaudère are surely a landmark in the annals of the fantastic.