about an abandoned wooden house, in which more than one generation of ghosts gather to drink tea, play chess and relive happy moments of the past. It is the third (central) part of the book that is the doorway to Another Reality.
Part IV. «Nostalgia for the Body» and Part V. «The Land of Mists» contain stories of the inhabitants of the Subtle World: souls not yet incarnated, but preparing for incarnation; disembodied, but longing for physical, as well as stories of other creatures, for example, like the Black Raven, who serves as a Guardian in the Land of Mists, and characters of fairy tales and other thought-forms. Here the influence of H. Chr. Andersen and E. T. A. Hoffmann, O. Wilde and A. S.-Exupery is captured, and the pearl of this collection, in my opinion, is the fairy tale «Water Lily», by the way, reprinted three times and beloved by readers. The story «A Guest» explodes one’s mind with a trivial tea-party… with Death.
The book «Tales of Ghosts» includes both new stories and previously published ones (from the books «Do You Believe in Ghosts?» and «Water Lily»), which received positive reviews from literary critics even after their first publication. The famous poet and writer Alexander Karpenko19 rightly compared Kryuchkova’s short stories to the mystical thrillers of Edgar Allan Poe (Poetograd, No. 12 (113), 2014).
The stories from the book «Tales of Ghosts» got the following literary awards: «Shadow of a Bird» after Edgar Allan Poe and «Case No…» 2021 in the nomination in honor of A. Hitchcock (the Moscow City Organization of the Union of Writers of Russia, NP «Literary Republic», 202120), H. Chr. Andersen and E. T. A. Hoffman «Tales for adults» (Open Literary Club «Response», 202221), «Literary Olympus» (League of Eurasian Writers, 201222).
A striking feature of Kryuchkova’s prose is the complete absence of a line between earthly and the Other Realities: while reading, we sometimes don’t even notice that the hero or heroine has already passed into the Other World! And all the characters – decisive and not so much ones, romantic and prudent, loving and hating, smart and naive, happy and unhappy, rich and poor – have one thing in common: they are mortal and, basically, suddenly.
The mystical spirit is masterfully matched by the author with the daily routine and real events of the era. Thus, behind the plot of the