This set would be useful in settings where the supernatural is often researched. The entries on motifs contain descriptions of titles that employ that motif. This could assist students who are looking for works with a particular theme.

Library Media Connection

From alien abductions to vampires and zombies, the use of particular motifs is traced. The influence of religion on the supernatural elements of fiction is also explored. All told, some 973 topics are covered. While many illustrations depict film adaptations, the focus here is on writing. Discussion of horror film and television is excluded. Although the editors wrote the majority of the entries, the 66 well-published contributors include Mike Ashley, Brian Stableford, Stephen Jones and Everett F. Bleiler. Many entries include extensive bibliographies. An index of fictional characters allows readers to identify favorite figures from Diedrich Knickerbocker to John the Balladeer. Additional indexes include motifs, authors, book titles and general subjects. This detailed guide should prove popular in both public and academic libraries.

Lawrence Looks at Books

This reference covers authors and works from the ancient world to the present. The encyclopedia features nearly 1,000 alphabetically arranged entries including such major canonical writers as Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, and Oscar Wilde, along with popular contemporary authors like Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and R.L. Stine.

Library Media Connection

[R]unning the gamut from film to fiction to theme entries to authors, and many entries are appealingly outfitted with illustrations or excerpts….[t]his reference work may be indispensable.

Fantasy & Science Fiction

Extensive and ambitious, this encyclopedia has nearly 1,000 entries packed into it and ranges through the work of about 600 writers, editors, publishers, critics, and magazines. Defining supernatural literature as literature that is avowedly postulated to have expanded, refuted, or contravened the laws of nature as currently understood, the editors have drawn from the ranks of writers of science fiction, fantasy, psychological suspense, and other genres. In addition to covering supernatural elements in the works of canonical writers like Dickens and Shakespeare, they include modern authors like Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan. There are writers from about 20 countries and from various time periods up to the present….The work is enthusiastically recommended for academic and large public libraries; since supernatural literature is popular with teens, high-school libraries might consider it, too.

Booklist, Starred Review