One of my favourite short story collections ever, The Bloody Chamber is a series of fairy tale retellings that are dark, sensual, and just beautifully written. Carter is one of my favourite writers, and the one I tend to measure my own writing against (The Convergence of Fairy Tales probably wouldn't exist without her influence). Her prose is just so rich and flawless that reading her is always a pleasure.

There is literally nothing about this collection that I don't love. I'm not even sure I can pick which of the stories here I think is the best. "Puss-in-Boots", maybe, or "The Erl-King", or "The Tiger's Bride"... they're all excellent.