I know of a certain book that has a range of stories, from joking to frightening, that you can’t put down until the last page – a book that has 10 chilling stories that all have one thing in common: curses.

Each story in this book, “Curses Inc. and Other Stories,” has, as you guessed, something to do with curses. Whether it’s good or bad curses – ones that bring people back to life, kill them or just drive them insane – each story has its own magic way of bringing you in to feel like you’re there.

Bill has just been humiliated by Denise, a girl who he offered to take to the high school dance, and he wants revenge! So when Bill comes across a Web site by the name of Curses Inc., he just has to look. After a little searching, he finds that Curses Inc. will put a selected curse on anyone he likes. But as the days turn into months, he can’t get back at Denise. Why?

Marietta just can’t find a good boy because of the “stupid war.” When she complains to her servant, Ceecee, about this predicament, Ceecee recommends going to see her grandmother who practices African curses. Granny Orilla offers Marietta a love potion in exchange for one year of her life (which she will transfer into 10 years for herself). Marietta agrees and decides the boy she wants is a friend’s boyfriend, Will Stottle.

Marietta soon finds out maybe she doesn’t want someone to fall that deeply in love with her and returns to Granny Orilla’s cypress swamp house for a cure. Instead of another love potion, she chooses to have golden hair, a skinny waist and a straight nose. Curse or cure, whatever you want to call it, Marietta demands potion after potion, while Granny Orilla grows younger and younger by continuing to take years off Marietta’s life in return for each potion. But Granny Orilla starts to worry about what happens to those years that she takes – what happens to the years and to Marietta?

All of these stories have a theme, or moral. The story about Bill and Denise teaches “Watch what you spend your money on. Is it really worth it?” The theme of Marietta’s story is “Be careful what you wish for,” a well-known theme.

On the last page of each story, author Vivian Vande Velde answers one question that arose in it: who, what, when, where or how. She also includes an interesting “Afterwards” section and explains why she wrote every story in this collection, including how she came up with the ideas for them.

Vande Velde’s word choice is spectacular and touches each of your senses. Her descriptions of the golden hair make you feel as though you are touching, smelling and seeing it. My imagination went wild in this book because of the settings and possibilities of other fictional untold stories about curses.

This book is worth a read and would be perfect for any imaginative person.