Tales from the Lake Vol. 2 by Jack Ketchum, Ramsey Campbell, Edward Lee, Tim Lebbon, Lisa Morton, etc.

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Tales from the Lake Vol. 2 by Jack Ketchum, Ramsey Campbell, Edward Lee, Tim Lebbon, Lisa Morton, etc.
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal, Contemporary, Historical
Length: Full Length (382 pages)
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

If you came here to read short stories about tranquil lakes, run to the nearest exit. Run as far away as you can from Ramsey Campbell, Jack Ketchum, Edward Lee, and our array of international voices:
Lisa Morton
Tim Lebbon
Richard Chizmar
Jim Goforth
Ben Eads
Jan Edwards
Hal Bodner
Raven Dane
Rocky Alexander
Glen Johnson
Aaron Dries
Mark West

It is a pure form of love that is day by day becoming adulterated. go to these guys cheap viagra pill Men viagra buy in usa that do all these exercises adequately reach multi-orgasm. Keep alcohol consumption low levitra online no prescription quit. Used for centuries to reduce symptoms of respiratory disorders, colds, liver damage, coughs, and much more. viagra 100mg pfizer Tales from The Lake volume two also includes the three winners from Crystal Lake Publishing’s Tales from The Lake Horror Writing Competition:
1st: Descending by John Whalen
2nd: Forever Dark by Jonathan Winn
3rd: Ripperscape by Vincenzo Bilof

Beneath this lake you’ll find nothing but mystery and suspense, horror and dread. Not to mention death and misery – tales to share around the campfire or living room floor. Dive beneath a frozen lake with Rena Mason’s “Winter’s Dollhouse”; allow Tim Lebbon to introduce you to “The God of Rain”; don’t go into the lake when Jim Goforth takes you to the haunting sit of “Lago de los Perdidos”; and never get in an elevator again with John Whalen’s award-winning “Descending.”

Cover by Ben Baldwin, and edited by Joe Mynhardt, Emma Audsley and R.J. Cavender, you can’t afford to spend another minute away from The Lake.

So dive on in.

The water’s just…right.

Even the most deeply buried secrets can eventually see the light of day.

In “Damned If You Do,” a man named John has started seeing a therapist in order to untangle his troubled home life. The problem is that he really doesn’t seem to want to revisit the past and figure out why he’s ended up in such a difficult situation with his wife. I was fascinated by the idea of a protagonist who is incredibly reluctant to allow the audience into even the smallest corner of his mind, and I only became more intrigued by John’s backstory as the plot progressed. The ending caught me by surprise in a good way!

While I enjoyed all of the stories in this anthology, there were a few that could have used little more polishing before being published. “St. Thomas of El Paso” was a good example of this. The plot followed a young man named Thomas who was kicked out of the orphanage where he was being raised when the priest running it discovered that the boy was gay. I was enthralled with the main character’s struggle to survive on his own as a teenager and young adult, especially once strange things began to happen in the small towns near his home. The ending felt rushed when I compared it to the beginning and middle, though. I would have really liked to see the narrator slow down and dig into the conflicts that had originally drawn me into the plot. There was a lot of material in there that wasn’t given as much room to grow as it needed.

What I appreciated the most about “Bone Wary” was how much time the narrator, Henry, took to describe his art studio and home to the audience. All of those details not only made me curious to find out why Henry spent so much time explaining them, they also paid off handsomely once I realized what his dark secret to all of his success was. This is the kind of tale that requires some legwork from the audience in order to understand what’s going on, but it’s well worth the effort.

Tales from the Lake Vol. 2 was a rewarding read. I’d heartily recommend it to any fellow fans of scary science fiction.

Wind Chill by Patrick Rutigliano

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Wind Chill by Patrick Rutigliano
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal, Holiday, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (100 pages)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

What if you were held captive by your own family?

Emma Rawlins has spent the last year a prisoner. The months following her mother’s death dragged her father into a paranoid spiral of conspiracy theories and doomsday premonitions. Obsessing him, controlling him, they now whisper the end days are finally at hand.

And he doesn’t intend to face them alone.

Emma finds herself drugged and dragged to a secluded cabin, the last refuge from a society supposedly due to collapse. Their cabin a snowbound fortress, her every move controlled, but even that isn’t enough to weather the end of the world.
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Everything she knows is out of reach, lost beyond a haze of white. There is no choice but to play her father’s game while she plans her escape.

But there is a force far colder than the freezing drifts. Ancient, ravenous, it knows no mercy. And it’s already had a taste…

It’s hard to reason with a kidnapper.

This was one of the most intense things I’ve read in a long time. I actually ended up devouring the whole thing in less than two days because of how eager I was to see what would happen next. The only thing scarier to me than being abducted would be if my abductor was someone I loved and trusted. Emma’s reaction to her new prison kept me perched on the edge of my seat from the first scene to the last one.

I would have liked to see more time spent developing the ending. The pacing in the beginning and the middle was excellent, but it suddenly sped up in the last few scenes. I went from breathlessly wondering what would happen next to feeling shocked that it was suddenly finished because of how quickly everything was paced. It would have been interesting to see how those scenes worked in a longer novella. There seemed to be enough material in the plot to warrant a longer storyline, and having that extra time would have made the end feel less abrupt to me.

Emma was so brave. I liked seeing how she reacted to her impossible circumstances, especially once she started to put the pieces together and figure out what was happening in her life. She was also such an easy main character to relate to because of how freely she shared her ideas with the audience.

Several other horror stories were included after Wind Chill ended. They surprised me because I didn’t realize this was an anthology when I originally requested it. It’s hard to say much else about this bonus content without giving away major spoilers due to how short each tale was. I definitely do suggest checking them out, though, as they were all well written and pretty scary.

Wind Chill made me shudder at the thought of being alone in a cabin in the woods in the middle of winter. I’d recommend it to anyone who has ever listened to the wind beat against their windows and shivered at the idea that there might be something other than a storm raging outside.

Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast by Jonathan Winn

AVENUE
Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast by Jonathan Winn
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Paranormal, Horror, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (148 pages)
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Eidolon Avenue: where the secretly guilty go to die.

One building. Five floors. Five doors per floor. Twenty-five nightmares feeding the hunger lurking between the bricks and waiting beneath the boards.

The First Feast. A retired Chinese assassin in apartment 1A fleeing from a lifetime of bloodshed. A tattooed man in 1B haunted by his most dangerous regret. A frat boy serial killer in 1C facing his past and an elderly married couple stumbling and wounded from fifty years of failed murder/suicide pacts in 1D. And, finally, a young girl in 1E whose quiet thoughts unleash unspeakable horror.

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You never really know what your neighbors might do when no one else is around.

The main character in “Apartment 1A – Lucky” was an old woman nicknamed Lucky who has carried a terrible secret for decades. It took me a while to get into this story because of how often the narrator jumped from her dark memories of the past to the quiet life she was leading in the present. These time periods were often so jumbled up in her mind that I wasn’t sure what was going on or how I should interpret certain scenes. I wanted to understand them much better than I did, but they were often so blended together that I couldn’t tell where the past ended and the present began. With that being said, her eerily calm descriptions of the things she’d seen and done made me shudder. They were a chilling introduction to the horrors hidden inside all of these apartments.

“Apt. 1B – Bullet” was about a drug addict who kept discovering strange things happening to his skin. Sometimes he’d find a brand new tattoo when his drugs wore off and he woke up. At other times one of his existing tattoos would grow larger or develop details that it had never had before. The fast pace worked well with the subject matter of this plot, especially during the last few scenes when there was a lot of information to take in. I also liked how much attention the author paid to small details as he described what the main character was experiencing.

What scared me the most about “Apt. 1C – Click” was how coldly Colton described the women he had picked up. It was like he was talking about buying a new lamp instead of getting to know a fellow human being. Sometimes the most frightening thing of all is someone who is this detached from life. I was fascinated by how vividly this part of his personality was shared with the audience. It was exactly what the storyline needed in order to be as creepy as possible.

Is there such a thing as loving someone too much? In “Apt. 1D – Anniversary,” Marta and Benji have been happily married for many years and never want to be separated. Their response to the possibility of one of them dying and leaving the other one behind was as disturbing as it was fascinating. There were a few problems with the logic of it all that I would have liked to see more attention paid to, but it was still intriguing to see how Benji and Marta planned to solved this problem.

There were parts of Umbra’s relationship with her grandmother in “Apt. 1E – Umbra” that never made sense to me. As a child Umbra was sent to live with her grandmother after a tragedy. Based on certain things the grandmother eventually mentioned, though, it seemed odd that the grandmother would have ever agreed to take the girl in. While I was definitely spooked by the main plot, I spent much more time questioning this part of the tale than I would have liked to. It would have been helpful to have a longer explanation of why the main character ended up living with her grandmother as that decision was so important to all of the scenes that came after it.

I’d recommend Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast to anyone who likes their horror gory and visceral.

The Dark at the End of the Tunnel by Taylor Grant

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The Dark at the End of the Tunnel by Taylor Grant
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (112 pages)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Discover what happens when:

– A wealthy industrialist awakens after ten years in suspended animation, and finds out that the horrors of the past can never be left behind.

– A lonely man realizes that he’s gradually vanishing from existence, into a nightmarish limbo of his own making.

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– A woman learns that the imaginary voices that haunt the delusional and criminally insane are, in fact, real.

This remarkable collection of short fiction exposes the terrors that hide beneath the surface of our ordinary world, behind people’s masks of normalcy, and lurking in the shadows at the farthest reaches of the universe.

Almost anything can be terrifying if you look at it the right way.

The main character in “The Silent Ones” had a peculiar problem: even though the post office claimed nothing was out of the ordinary, he hadn’t been receiving his mail. What made it all even more bizarre was that no one else seemed to notice how upset he was by this. I read a lot of science fiction, and I’ve never seen anything like this story before. It reminded me why I enjoy this genre so much, especially once the plot progressed and the main character started noticing other strange developments in his life. Seeing how an otherwise mild-mannered guy reacted to all of these weird things made me wish for a sequel. I would have really liked to know what happened next!

There were certain things about “Gods and Devils” that never made sense to me. The storyline was about a space ship’s captain, Vega, who comes out of stasis only to realize that something horribly violent has taken place while he and all of the other humans on board were unconscious while en route to a new home. His confusion and panic was completely justifiable at first. Had he been an ordinary person who wasn’t in charge of the safety of so many other people, his later actions wouldn’t have been so jarring. I had a lot of trouble understanding why someone with as much training and experience as one would need to be a captain would react the way he did later on in the plot, though. It might have made sense for someone who wasn’t particularly intelligent, but it wasn’t at all what I would have expected from a professional with his background.

In “Show and Tell,” Jacob has been sent to his school psychologist’s office to discuss a series of disturbing drawings he created. The pictures showed medical equipment and other things that most children don’t have experience with at Jacob’s age, so his psychologist was curious to see where the boy had learned about them and why he was so obsessed with them. What I liked the most about this tale was how straightforward it was. The narrator laid everything out methodically and didn’t dance around the topic once it became obvious what was happening. While I did figure out the twist early on, it was still interesting to see if my theory was correct. The ending was also nicely handled. It fit in well with everything else that had been established about Jacob and his home life earlier on.

I’d recommend The Dark at the End of the Tunnel to anyone who likes the dark and sometimes gory side of science fiction.

Flowers in a Dumpster by Mark Allan Gunnells

flowers
Flowers in a Dumpster by Mark Allan Gunnells
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (144 pages)
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

The world is full of beauty and mystery. In these 17 tales, Gunnells will take you on a journey through landscapes of light and darkness, rapture and agony, hope and fear.

A post-apocalyptic landscape where it is safer to forget who you once were… An unusual support group comprised of cities dying of a common illness… A porn star that has opened himself up to demonic forces… Two men battling each other to the death who discover they have much in common… A woman whose masochistic tendencies may be her boyfriend’s ruin… A writer whose new friendship proves a danger to his marriage and his sanity.
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Let Gunnells guide you through these landscapes where magnificence and decay co-exist side by side. Come pick a bouquet from these Flowers in a Dumpster.

There’s something lurking around the corner. Do you hear it?

I don’t normally suggest skipping ahead in anthologies, but I have to make an exception for “Land of Plenty.” What intrigued me the most about the main character, Isabella, was how emotionally connected she was to her grandfather. They both lived in a small, peaceful community where everyone’s needs are always met. There was a dark secret lurking behind their quiet success, though, that made me shudder. I deeply enjoyed the process of slowly peeling back the layers of their society. This could have easily been a full-length novel because of how richly detailed the world building was, although it honestly did work beautifully as a short story.

There were a handful of stories that I thought could have used a little more polishing. The fact that this happened only a couple of times in the entire collection is impressive, though. I simply had some trouble figuring out what a couple of the tales were trying to communicate to the audience. “The Support Group” was one such example of this. The plot about how different cities reacted to a terrible parasite that couldn’t be cured by any known methods. The use of metaphors to show what was going on was excellent. I cringed and laughed my way through a lot of them, but the plot twists were revealed so quickly and briefly that I struggled to understand what they meant. I’m still not entirely sure that my interpretation of the hints was accurate. It would have been really helpful to have a few more clues about what was going on here as the parts I did figure out were fascinating.

In “The Locked Tower,” a writer named Alec becomes obsessed with seeing what is hidden in the top of the tower in one of the buildings at his alma mater. The more the people who work there try to convince him to stop asking about it, the deeper his desire to see the tower for himself grows. What I enjoyed the most about this character’s quest was how much foreshadowing was used to hint at what was going on. Such an intelligent character needed a good reason to ignore all of the signals he was receiving about the contents of that tower. The foreshadowing only seemed to make his curiosity grow stronger which was an interesting thing to witness as well.

Flowers in a Dumpster was the best book I’ve read from Crystal Lake Publishing so far! I’d strongly recommend it to anyone who enjoys modern horror.

The Outsiders Anthology

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The Outsiders by Stephen Bacon, James Everington, Gary Fry, V.H. Leslie, and Rosanne Rabinowitz
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Genre: Suspense/Mystery, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Horror, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (98 pages)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

a Suspense Thriller / Horror featuring the gated community of Priory, with its cult leader Charles Erich and his followers, including those who want to overthrow him, and those who’ll do anything for him. Is that which they worship the true evil, or does evil reside in them?

Inside Priory awaits a lot more than meets the eye. The people might seem friendly, but only because their enigmatic leader Charles Erich accepts nothing less.

The cottages within this gated community seem simple enough, and even though what lurks beneath them is more ancient than mankind itself, can anything be more evil than the people worshipping it?

If you dare follow this UK invasion of five prime authors as they each tell their own story of the people living behind Priory’s steel gates and high walls, you’ll quickly find yourself an outsider, as well.

Stories by Stephen Bacon, James Everington, Gary Fry, V.H. Leslie, and Rosanne Rabinowitz.
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The Priory. A community of one mind and purpose. A place of order, commitment, peace, and service. A perfect world, building on mind shattering secrets from beyond the pale. Enter…if you dare.

Anything can happen behind a security wall, especially when what lurks behind it is so well-hidden.

Lee introduced the reader to this secretive community in “The Subprime.” As a man stuck in a job he finds morally objectionable, he was ready to turn in his resignation when his boss invited him to Priory for an sociable evening. While I figured out the twist early on, it was still worthwhile to see how everything unfolded because the author spent so much time setting it all up precisely.

“Impossible Colours” followed a police officer named Michala Bruce as she attempted to find out what happened to a man who had recently moved to Priory. Her perspective as someone who lived elsewhere was fascinating, although the inclusion of more than one narrator was distracting for something this length. Had it only been written in Michala’s voice, this would have been my favorite tale of them all.

What I found most intriguing about “Stolen from the Sea” was how much time it spent on character development. No one is entirely good or evil, so it was interesting to get to know certain characters from a point of view that I hadn’t considered yet. It’s hard to discuss this in any detail without giving away spoilers, but I was pleased with how much time the author spent showing why and how these individuals made certain decisions.

Petra and Bernard’s shifting relationship as a newly retired couple in “Precious Things” piqued my curiosity. It could have easily been expanded into a full-length novel, although it worked equally well as a short work. I also liked how the plot provided a few more hints about what was going on, especially since some of them were introduced so subtly.

There were a few things about “Meat, Motion, and Light” that I had trouble understanding. Claudia grew up in this community and has begun to question some of the things she experienced during those years. Some of the memories she shared with the reader seemed to contradict what we’d been taught earlier. I was never quite sure if I’d misunderstood the rules earlier or if Claudia’s interpretation of them was supposed to catch me off guard. It would have been helpful to have more details about this as I was otherwise fascinated by her account of what happened.

All of these stories are set in the same universe and involve the same general group of characters. I should note that the introduction to this anthology, “Welcome to Priory,” contained some spoilers. While it provided valuable information about how and why Priory was first formed, I probably wouldn’t have read it until I’d finished “Stolen from the Sea” had I known ahead of time that it would giving me so many hints about what was to come.

The Outsiders is a mystery that knows how to flirt heavily with science fiction. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys either genre.

Tales from the Lake Vol. 1

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Tales from the Lake Vol. 1 by Graham Masterton, G.N. Braun, Taylor Grant, John Palisano, Charles Day, John Paul Allen, Bev Vincent, Elizabeth Massie, Joan De La Haye, Tim Curran, Tim Waggoner, Jennifer Loring, J. Daniel Stone, William Ritchey, and Blaze McRob
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Horror, Contemporary, Paranormal
Length: Short Story (128 pages)
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Dive into fourteen tales of non-themed horror, with short stories and dark poems by some of the best horror writers in the world, including the master himself, Graham Masterton.

Allow the very first instalment of Tales From the Lake to transport you to lakeside terror in Lover, Come Back to Me, Lady of Lost Lake, and Game On; journey to the basement of your local pet store in Dead Pull and your neighbourhood pub in O’Halloran’s; visit the apocalypse in Devil’s Night; travel to Africa in Witch-Compass and The Reunion; spend time with the talking dolls in Don’t Look at Me; experience drug addiction from close up in Junksick; and climb a ladder to the heavens in Perrollo’s Ladder.

Tales From the Lake Vol.1 includes the winning stories from the 2013 Tales From the Lake Horror Writing Competition: a nautical tale in Jenn Loring’s The Art of Wrecking; a bizarre story of strange addictions in J. Daniel Stone’s Alternative Muses; and a cult horror story in the jungles of South America in William Ritchey’s Las Maquinas.

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Perfectly ordinary days only remain so for as long as nothing unexpected happens. Unfortunately for the characters in the first volume of Tales From the Lake, extraordinary days far outnumber the run-of-the-mill ones.

Placing “Lover, Come Back to Me” first in line was an excellent decision. Alan’s reluctant fishing trip with his girlfriend, Jan, quickly wanders into some strange territory when she notices something weird happening as they wait for fish to nibble on their lines. Strong pacing and a few twists that I never saw coming kept me glued to the page until the end.

All of the stories in this collection have sharp, interesting premises, but some of them would have benefitted from more time to be fully developed before being released. For example, “O’Halloran’s” follows the bizarre journey of a man who has just dropped his girlfriend off at the hospital for an abortion. I had trouble following what happens next, though, and was a little puzzled by how certain events were meant to tie together.

Anyone who picks up this anthology should read “Don’t Look at Me” first. Imagine spending years sitting alone in a neglected corner of a garden shop as a conscious, intelligent garden gnome who can’t do anything to change his circumstances. It’s a boring, lonely, and depressing existence until everything changes in an instant. I loved the wry perspective of this narrator and would be quite interested in reading a sequel to his adventures.

“The Fine Art of Wrecking” is another example of a fascinating premise that never quite ties all of its clues together. Christopher grew up in a small, poor, isolated town that keeps itself going through a peculiar arrangement they’ve made with an incredibly powerful being. I quickly found myself immersed in the tough decisions Christopher and his neighbors have made in order to survive, but it would have been easier to understand the climax of this piece had more information about their arrangement been provided. A few other short stories were similarly a little sparse on important details.

This is an intriguing collection of horror and science fiction tales. From what I understand, there is a distinct possibility that a sequel is in the works. I, for one, am looking forward to reading more from any author lucky enough to be included in this anthology.

Tales from the Lake Vol. 1 has piqued my curiosity. This book is something I’d recommend to anyone who likes their science fiction dark and full of chilling twists.

Samurai and Other Stories by William Meikle

SAMRUAI
Samurai and Other Stories by William Meikle
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Historical, Paranormal, Contemporary, Holiday
Length: Short Story (132 pages)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Review by: Astilbe

In Samurai and Other Stories you’ll find numerous ghosts, many Scotsmen, a big blob, some holy relics, some unholy relics, a Mothman, a barbarian, some swordplay, a shoggoth and people that nobody expects.

This collection by William Meikle brings together stories from the past decade in an exploration of the perils of exploring dark places, both external and internal.

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Should everything that goes bump in the night be investigated? It’s much easier to ask this question in the middle of the afternoon than when you hear something bizarre in the inky darkness and know dawn is many hours away.

“The Yule Log” opens with John selecting the perfect log to burn in his fireplace. This isn’t any ordinary kindling, though, and I was mesmerized by what he decides to carve into it first and why he chose that particular motif. It was also interesting to see how John’s emotional state is communicated to the reader in a piece that includes almost no dialogue. This is a good Christmas story for readers who ordinarily find that genre too sentimental.

In “Inquisitor,” Father Fernando has been given the responsibility of interrogating a strange creature that has just sailed in from the New World. He steps into this role with only a handful of diary entries from the last man who encountered the creature to guide him. The concept is well thought out, but I would have liked to see more time spent on the climax of Father Fernando’s investigation. Certain aspects of the plot would have been much more frightening had they been given more time to develop before the end. There were several other tales in this book that followed a similar pattern. Each one starts off with an intriguing question or scenario, but much more time is spent hinting at what is actually going on than wrapping up the plot threads.

By far my favourite story in this collection is “The Haunting of Esther Cox.” Upon first glance Esther is no different than any other young woman living in a rural community in the late 1880s. She has an impeccable reputation and is surrounded by adoring family members. Yet she’s also carrying a terrible secret that threatens to destroy everything good in her life. Each diary entry provides another clue about what is really happening. In this case that particular writing style works extremely well because of how slowly certain facts wiggle to the surface of her mind. The descriptions of the strict social mores of her culture add an extra layer of horror to this tale, and the creative ways in which Esther responds to everything her community expects of someone her age and gender makes this a must-read.

This was my first introduction to Mr. Meikle’s work. If it is any indication of his writing style, I can’t wait to read more from him. He has a highly imaginative mind whose tendency to find the dark twist in even the most mundane circumstances is well-suited for both the horror and science fiction genres.

Samurai and Other Stories is a truly original collection of horror tales that are especially appropriate for longterm fans of this genre. It is as unique as it is deeply creepy, and I look forward to starting the whole thing over from the beginning.

Where You Live by Gary McMahon

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Where You Live by Gary McMahon
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Contemporary, Paranormal, Holiday
Length: Short Story (123 pages)
Heat Level: Sensual
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Horror is everywhere…

It’s waiting behind a closed door, sitting in an ordinary chair, or following you on a country walk. Perhaps it’s washed up on a tranquil beach, hanging at a local skate park, recorded on an MP3 player hard drive, or even embedded somewhere deep within the design of something as simple and innocuous as a supermarket barcode.

Horror is everywhere, in the shadows and in the light.

It takes on every shape, comes in every conceivable size.
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But most of all it’s right where you live.

Fear can be many things: an early warning system, a false alarm, a cheap thrill, or even the sublimation of stereotypes you’d never admit to believing in. The question is, how do you know when it’s real?

In “Just Another Horror Story,” a couple in the middle of a torrid love affair check into a hotel room for a night of debauchery. Little do Terry and Nancy know what actually awaits them. This tale was a great introduction to Mr. McMahon’s work. While I was able to anticipate some of the twists and turns in it I was pleasantly surprised by how often he made me second-guess my predictions about what would happen next.

“Trog Boy Ran” is by far the best story in this collection. Shortly Niles Reedman responds to a recent, painful breakup by stalking his ex-girlfriend and very odd things begin to occur around him. The pacing in this piece is so well done it felt almost cinematic. As disturbing as it was for me to step into the mind of a chilling and extremely dangerous protagonist, I couldn’t stop reading until I reached the end of Niles’ adventure.

I desperately wanted to like “The Chair.” In it a boy named Ben battles with despair, loneliness and an undisclosed malaise as his mother struggles with her own mental illness. The introduction caught my attention right away, but I had trouble understanding the symbolism of certain objects in Ben’s life and well as what was happening in the final scene. The sequel to this tale, “The Table,” answers some questions before asking the reader to sort out a brand new batch of them. The concept is alluring, but given the subtlety of what is happening these particular stories may have worked better as a novella.

This pattern repeats itself a few other times in this collection. Every entry includes at least one surprising, frightening, or unexpected element, but some of their horrors are a little difficult to unravel. I found something I really enjoyed about every single tale. That isn’t something that normally occurs for me when I review larger anthologies. Had a little more time been spent planting clues about what was truly happening in the tales that skipped over as much exposition as possible this book would have easily earned a much higher rating.

Save some time to savour the story notes at the end of this novel. Reading them made me feel like I was sitting down with Mr. McMahon to have a personal conversation about where his ideas come from and why he wrote certain characters the way he did. This section is a definite highlight of the novel, but it should be saved until the very end to avoid spoilers.

Where You Live is a solid collection of psychological horror. It’s a good choice for anyone in the mood for a thought-provoking, understated read that becomes more frightening the more one thinks about what they just read.

Things Slip Through by Kevin Lucia

THINGS
Things Slip Through by Kevin Lucia
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Genre: Horror, Contemporary, Paranormal, Historical
Length: Full Length (159 pages)
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Welcome to Clifton Heights, New York. Just another average Adirondack town, and nice enough in its own right.

Except after dark, or under the pale light of the moon. Or in a very private doctor’s office at Clifton Heights General Hospital, where no one can hear you scream. Or on a road out of town that never ends, or in an old house sitting on the edge of town with a mind – and will – of its own.

Maybe you shouldn’t have left the interstate, my friend. Maybe you should’ve driven on to the next town.

But you didn’t. You saw our sign, turned down our road, figuring on just a short stay. And maybe it will be.

Or maybe you’ll never leave.

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Except after dark. Or on cold winter days when no one is around, and you’re all alone…

Some questions are better left unasked, and some mysteries were never meant to be solved.

Chris has investigated some truly bizarre cases since he moved to Clifton Heights a year ago. Despite growing close to several of the residents in the town he has never been able to convince anyone to explain what they know about the people in their community who died under violent circumstances or disappeared without a trace. Their reticence casts an eerie pallor on the first few chapters, and Chris’ attempts to tease the truth out of them provides smooth transitions between the short stories embedded in this piece.

I requested to review Things Slip Through under the assumption that it was a collection of unrelated tales, so discovering that they shared a common setting and in some cases the same characters was a pleasant surprise. Mr. Lucia wove the lives of the residents of Clifton Heights together in ways that I did not always anticipate. Coming across these connections occasionally helped to explain things that had earlier mystified me about certain plot points.

The author spent so much time amplifying the mysteries of Clifton Heights that I would have liked to see him spend more time explaining how the community became such an unnerving place to live. Some backstory is provided, but given the ominous tone of certain conversations early on I was expecting to have more clues to work with in order to better understand how certain facts were linked to one another.

Given how dark the plot had been up until that point I was expecting a similar tone in the final case Chris revisits. The author’s approach to the disappearance of a small child was unexpected and would have worked quite well as a standalone story, but it did not blend in well with the overall tone of this novel. This was even more true when something from an earlier case that had been used in one of the scariest scenes in the book showed up in this one. With more development the juxtaposition between the two scenes would have added depth to the plot, but as it was written I was a little confused by why Mr. Lucia made the decision to link these tales.

With that being said, reading Things Slip Through was like finally catching a good look at something dark and slithery lurking in the shadows that normally moves too fast to be seen. The author clearly spent lot of time developing the setting, and his meticulous attention to detail pays off every time the tension builds to a new peak.

Things Slip Through is the scariest thing I’ve come across so far in 2013. This is a good choice for anyone who likes the surge of adrenaline that comes from reading extremely descriptive horror.