I like Ozioma the Wicked mostly because it has that African feel to it of the image the Western world used to have of Africa before it was all poor and after it was all racism. The Manticore, The Mermaid and Me started out as a sort of teen story which quickly turned strange and then into pure horror. There's a little Hercules over it all, but still amazing and year's ahead of Disney's Hercules, albeit centuries after the original Hercules tale. It's hilarious and exciting at the same time! The Sage of Theare is more of a classical fantasy tale from the author who gave us Howl's Moving Castle. Flight of the Horse is really a sci-fi story that gets mixed up with fantasy due to timetravel. Come Lady Death feels like a Victorian vampire story despite the fact that it's really about Death herself. Gabriel-Ernest is a fantastic mash-up between Mowgli and a werewolf :P Or All the Seas with Oysters also played on the border of psychological horror. I don't know why I stopped reading Nesbit at all. The Cockatoucan is brilliant and old and presented as a classical children's tale as you'd imagined Peter Pan to be.
It was also the first story of the book and it reached into the fields of psychological horror, which completely took me in! I also really loved The Cockatoucan, Gabriel-Ernest, Or All the Seas with Oysters, Come Lady Death, Flight of the Horse, The Sage of Theare, The Manticore, The Mermaid and Me, and Ozioma the Wicked. My favourite short story was by far the one without a name you can pronounce by Gahan Wilson.
2004 - "The Smile on the Face" by Nalo Hopkinson.1982 - "The Sage of Theare" by Diana Wynne Jones.1972 - "-*-ยค-*-" by Gahan Wilson (the name is just a blob in the book, I tried to recreate the shape of the blob).1969 - "Flight of the Horse" by Larry Niven.1958 - "Or All the Seas with Oysters" by Avram Davidson.1942 - "The Compleat Werewolf" by Anthony Boucher.1900 - "The Cockatoucan" by Edith Nesbit.1885 - The Griffin and the Minor Canon" by Frank R.Of them were recent or from the 60's and 70's, but the oldest one was from the 1880's! In the end of the book was annotations to whom had written the short story and when it was first published. I had it with me to London but I hardly read on the plane. I had it with me to Metaltown, but I didn't read on the train. I also finally finished the book Unnatural Creatures.