Book excerpt: In this collection of eight stories by one of America's most gifted writers, Helen McCloy takes the reader into a world of mystery and imagination. In the signature story - 'The Singing Diamonds' - Mathilde Verworn enlists the help of Basil Willing, a psychiatrist-sleuth, to answer the question of whether there is such a thing as collective hallucination. Six people from six different locations testify to seeing diamond-shaped objects in the sky, and four of those six have died in peculiar circumstances in the past twelve days ...