The book contains the following stories (as well as Ellison's own introduction for each tale):

• "Introduction: Revealed at Last! What Killed the Dinosaurs! And You Don't Look So Terrific Yourself"
• "Croatoan"
• "Working With the Little People"
• "Killing Bernstein"
• "Mom"
• "In Fear of K"
• "Hitler Painted Roses"
• "The Wine Has Been Left Open Too Long and the Memory Has Gone Flat"
• "From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet"
• "Lonely Women are the Vessels of Time"
• "Emissary from Hamelin"
• "The New York Review of Bird"
• "Seeing"
• "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams"
• "Strange Wine"
• "The Diagnosis of Dr. D'arqueAngel"

Ellison wrote "Strange Wine" while sitting in the window of Westwood-area science fiction bookstore, A Change of Hobbit.

Stephen King considered this one of the best horror fiction books published between 1950 and 1980 in his 1981 non-fiction book about the horror genre, Danse Macabre, specifically reviewing the stories "Croatoan", "Hitler Painted Roses", "Lonely Women are the Vessels of Time", "Emissary from Hamelin" and "From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet".

• http://www.islets.net/collections/strangewine.html