Díaz Llanillo is known for her blending of paranormal fantasy with black humor and metaphysical undertones; her short fiction has been described as bizarre, uncanny, absurd, macabre, intellectual and ironic. Her work explores universal questions of right and wrong, good and evil, real and unreal. Jeremy Glazier suggests Díaz Llanillo’s tales are reminiscent of “Poe… or, better yet, Edith Wharton’s ghost stories and the twisted world of Shirley Jackson.” Jorge Febles likens her style to Latin American greats such as Silvina Ocampo, Virgilio Piñera, Cortázar and Rosario Ferré. Her writing could also could be compared to the darkly humorous horror of Haruki Murakami.The tales in this collection are set in the city of Havana, although to enter her fiction is to cross a frontier into strange spaces and imaginary worlds. Díaz Llanillo takes everyday scenes of Cuban life, rotates them on the axis of her imagination, then reveals the hallucinations, ghosts, dreams, and supernatural forces that lie beneath the surface. Carnivorous plants, menacingly self-replicating red beans, impossible murders and discerning ghosts looking for real estate are just a few of the images that prompt uncomfortable shivers and guilty half-laughs for the readers.Tracing the decades-long trajectory of Llanillo’s writing, About Spirits & Other Mysteries gives a representative sample from the six major story collections published before her demise. The 53 stories included in this volume come from El Castigo (1966), Antes y después del sueño (1999), Cambio de vida (2002), Entre latidos (2005), Los rostros (2008), and El vendedor de cabezas (2009). The book also contains a foreword from the author’s daughter, Dr. Raquel Pérez Díaz; a translator’s note by Manuel Martínez; and an analytical essay by the main English-language editors, Sara E. Cooper y Maria di Francesco, translated from Spanish by the principal Spanish-language editor, Daniel Díaz Mantilla.