Marjorie Bowen (1885-1952) was a prolific author of some 150 books and counted Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, and Graham Greene among her many admirers. Her most enduring work is her tales of the ghostly and supernatural, her favorites of which she collected in 1949 under the title The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories.

Included in this volume are some of her most famous stories, including "The Crown Derby Plate", a classic in which a woman gets more than she bargained for when she purchases a set of old plates at an estate sale, "Kecksies", an unsettling tale in which it is unclear exactly who is dead and who is not, and the title story, "The Bishop of Hell", which tells of a defrocked clergyman who promises to reveal the secrets of the afterlife from beyond the dead.