THE BURNING BABY
and Other Ghosts
by John Gordon
Five macabre tales of murder or suicide victims returning to exact gruesome retribution: Bernard conceals the body of the pregnant local teenager he's killed beneath a huge bonfire, only to have a ``Burning Baby'' crawl out of the fire's heart and into his lap; a corpse rises to drag its murderer ``Under the Ice'' of a frozen fen; a retired schoolteacher feeds her illegitimate granddaughter to the ``Eels'' in a canal—and the favor is returned (``When the sun came up and filled the room with warmth, Miss Jervis lay quite still. Her nightgown, however, heaved with a life of its own''). Gordon's writing is simple and unforced; he describes his ghastlies with a deft precision that will leave readers shivering—and eager for more. For stout hearts only. (Fiction. 12-14)