Part II. «The Master of Fates» are shocking stories about those who imagine themselves to be God: perverted maniacs and quite on their minds – cold-blooded and prudent killers commit crimes without a twinge of conscience. The author’s incredible ability to penetrate the mind of maniacs culminates in the chilling, purely Hitchcock-like story «Cranberries» and strikes the reader on the spot, causing him to fear not only the swamps, but also the cranberries!

Part III. «Restless Souls» contains mystical stories in the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe about ghost apparitions, each one strikingly unpredictable in its plot. The geography of phenomena is vast: London, Paris, Rome, Prague, Moscow, New York… Wherever the ghosts appear – in modern offices or in condemned houses, whether they are walking in the park near the Louvre or unwinding in a seaside resort in Italy – they are looking for an opportunity to complete some unfinished situation during their earthly lives, which haunts them after death, or they come to the aid of still alive relatives and beloved ones. The stories are so touching that they will not leave the reader without empathy: he involuntarily seeks a way of salvation for the main characters, finding it together with them and for himself. And here is another masterpiece – a heart-warming story «The House by the Station» 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.