The Un-Rest Cure and Other Beastly Tales — Saki / H.H. Munro

Take a decent helping of P.G. Wodehouse, a soupçon of Wilde's epigrammatic wit, then season with the bloodthirsty malevolence of Edward Lear and Roald Dahl, and you will have an approximation of the inimitable genius of Hector Hugo Munro (alias Saki), the most hilarious and savage exponent of the short story in the English language. His flawlessly-etched cautionary tales, which invariably involve wild animals, tell of country parties where upper-class twits and bores meet with fittingly macabre accidents, where the children are always beastly, and where his urbane and naughty young heroes get the better of their peers using barbed sarcasm and elaborate hoaxes. Saki exposes his upper-crust guests to the menace of Nature -- always perched, just out of sight, waiting to claim its next victim.