If the final rug-pulls in stories like “Lamb to the Slaughter” (the murder weapon devoured by the police) and “Man from the South” (the surprise reveal of the wife’s collection of fingers) delighted you, you’ll relish the precision-tooled switchbacks in A Twist in the Tale. Archer builds neat moral mousetraps and then snaps them shut in the last line, giving you that same wicked little jolt Dahl perfected.

Enjoyed the cool, cruel chuckle behind “The Landlady” and the icy politeness masking horror in “William and Mary”? Waugh’s The Loved One skewers the funeral industry in Hollywood with the same deadpan bite. Like Dahl’s genteel monstrosities, its perfectly mannered characters do unspeakable things—only here the embalming fluid comes with a cocktail olive.

If you were fascinated by the cool schemers of “Taste” and the chilling domestic calculations in “The Way Up to Heaven,” meet Tom Ripley. In The Talented Mr. Ripley, you’ll follow a smooth operator whose improvisations and moral slipperiness echo Dahl’s most devious characters—only stretched over a taut cat-and-mouse that dares you to root for the villain.

If the compact shock of “Parson’s Pleasure” or the brisk cruelty of “The Landlady” appealed to you, Saki’s vignettes deliver that same swift, elegant sting. Beasts and Super-Beasts serves up drawing-room traps, social predators, and wicked children—each story a tiny guillotine that drops just as you smile.

If you loved the intellectual neatness of Dahl’s setups—like the precise wager in “Man from the South” or the meticulous plotting of “Parson’s Pleasure”—Ficciones offers labyrinths of logic and imagination. Borges crafts stories that click together like hidden mechanisms, delivering the same heady satisfaction when the larger design snaps into focus.