Anthony Horowitz was born in 1955 and sent to Orley Farm, a particularly vicious boy's preparatory school in North London, which gave him his first taste of horror. It isn't explained why it is too dark to take a picture of Jamie but not a dog and tree, and it was a point I found jarring. The train he boards crashes and injures him severely, leaving him with the same yellow face as the one in the photo. I am a fan of Anthony Horowitz, but I didn't pay attention to the book's author or description; the word "HORROR" boldly emblazoned on the spine and the bloody handprint dominating the cover were all it took for me to conclude I'd like the book. I liked the shortest horror story ever written because it was clever how it spelled out "I am going to murder you".

Put the two components of the author's surname together, horror and witch, and you might expect supernatural things to start happening. It turns out however that she has been sold as meat to a restaurant for cannibals, in a very uninspired twist. The intention here, presumably, is to get us to hate Harriet for reasons that become clear at the end of the tale.

It would have been better if after each prediction by the computer a loading bar is partially filled. The Hitchhiker" and "Twist Cottage" are written in first-person, while "Burnt" (renamed as Burned in the US release) is expressed as a series of diary entries.

Judging the book for what it is, a collection of nasty and creepy stories for young people, it deserves four stars.If that weren't enough, the penultimate story, 'Twist Cottage', features an old thatched cottage that has tiles falling off the roof!