HAUNTING TALES

Nineteen stories, mostly British in inflection (except for Walter R. Brooks' youngest story in the group or Robert Arthur's Hitchcock magazine-derived short) and generally superior in quality and gentle in cast. From Sorche Nic Leodhas to Ruth Manning-Sanders to Joan Aiken to Eleanor Farjeon's sentimental prose ballad, a very disappointing Ray Bradbury in which his wings are dipped like those of his ""Uncle Einar"" who flies family errands, H.G. Wells' old ""Magic Shop,"" a good Marion Crawford in which a beautiful doll appropriates a little girl for the nonce, or so it seems -- and E. Nesbit's catchy and prophetic John Charrington who claims he'll be married, dead or alive. . . . Nothing to spook any reader into the middle of the night but pale and pleasing shades of shades.