Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams

This collection brings together Plath's short stories, prose pieces and journal extracts, many unpublished or little known during her life. The stories explore young women, family tension, ambition, fear and the odd, sometimes menacing details of everyday life. The title story imagines a worker in a psychiatric clinic who secretly reads the records of patients' dreams and sees in them a sacred text. The book shows Plath as a prose writer alongside her work as a poet, with humour, sharp observation and darker moods side by side.