Cold Hand in Mine

<i>Cold Hand in Mine</i> was first published in the U.K. in 1975 and in the U.S. in 1977. The story 'Pages from a Young Girl's Journal' won the Aickman World Fantasy Award in 1975. It was originally published in <i>The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction</i> in 1973 before appearing in this collection. <p/><i>Cold Hand in Mine</i> stands as one of Aickman's best collections and contains eight stories that show off his powers as a 'strange story' writer to the full being more ambiguous than standard ghost stories. Throughout the stories the reader is introduced to a variety of characters from a man who spends the night in a Hospice to a German aristocrat and a woman who sees an image of her own soul. There is also a nod to the conventional vampire story ('Pages from a Young Girl's Journal') but all the stories remain unconventional and inconclusive which perhaps makes them all the more startling and intriguing.