Finished 5 in January and they were all pretty good.
Classic Horror Stories - the Barnes & Noble edition. At nearly 800 pages and over 40 stories, this was a big book with a lot of great stories in it. As with any anthology of this size, not all the stories worked for me, but overall this edition would provide an excellent introduction to classic horror / weird fiction from the 1830's to the 1930's. 4 / 5
Brother was the first thing I've read by Ania Ahlborn, but it won't be the last. At times it remined me of Kin by KP Burke, and both Off Season and The Girl Next Door by Ketchum, yet the story is original enough to stand on its own merits. Similar to those books, Brother was a very dark, very bleak story. The storyline is engaging and fast paced and the small cast of characters are well developed (except for the mother & father, who are both presented as very one dimensional, and I got the feeling this was by the author's design). There were a couple of big holes in the plotline, as though Ahlborn was not going to let reality interfere with the storyline. Overall, highly recommended for fans of reality based dark fiction. 4.5 / 5
The Willows & Other Nightmares by Algernon Blackwood contained Blackwood's masterpiece 'The Willows" and 4 other classic short stories. A true pioneer of weird fiction in the early 1900's, Blackwood was writing cosmic horror before HP Lovecraft. 4.5 / 5
Strange Fruit by James Cooper. Cooper's short story collection, Human Pieces, was the best single author collection I read last year. His novella Strange Fruit didn't lower the bar any. Similar to the stores in Human Pieces, Strange Fruit is a dark story peopled with flawed characters. A coming of age story about a friendless girl who is mercilessly bullied at school by the other girls, has a dysfunctional relationship with her single parent mother, and whose fantasies about the boy next door are crushed after a face to face encounter. Then Cooper introduces the man with the strange fruit who likes to hang around the park & watch the kids play. My only complaint was with the characterization of Ellie, the story's protagonist. At times she was portraited as a young girl (7-8 years old), other times she seemed to act more like a teenager (Cooper never established her age in the story). But anyone looking for dark, yet engaging fiction, can't go wrong with choosing something by James Cooper. 4.5 / 5
The Weird West by William Meikle. A chapbook collection of 3 weird western tales. The stories were more fantasy / horror in nature than western. 3.5 / 5
B
Classic Horror Stories - the Barnes & Noble edition. At nearly 800 pages and over 40 stories, this was a big book with a lot of great stories in it. As with any anthology of this size, not all the stories worked for me, but overall this edition would provide an excellent introduction to classic horror / weird fiction from the 1830's to the 1930's. 4 / 5
Brother was the first thing I've read by Ania Ahlborn, but it won't be the last. At times it remined me of Kin by KP Burke, and both Off Season and The Girl Next Door by Ketchum, yet the story is original enough to stand on its own merits. Similar to those books, Brother was a very dark, very bleak story. The storyline is engaging and fast paced and the small cast of characters are well developed (except for the mother & father, who are both presented as very one dimensional, and I got the feeling this was by the author's design). There were a couple of big holes in the plotline, as though Ahlborn was not going to let reality interfere with the storyline. Overall, highly recommended for fans of reality based dark fiction. 4.5 / 5
The Willows & Other Nightmares by Algernon Blackwood contained Blackwood's masterpiece 'The Willows" and 4 other classic short stories. A true pioneer of weird fiction in the early 1900's, Blackwood was writing cosmic horror before HP Lovecraft. 4.5 / 5
Strange Fruit by James Cooper. Cooper's short story collection, Human Pieces, was the best single author collection I read last year. His novella Strange Fruit didn't lower the bar any. Similar to the stores in Human Pieces, Strange Fruit is a dark story peopled with flawed characters. A coming of age story about a friendless girl who is mercilessly bullied at school by the other girls, has a dysfunctional relationship with her single parent mother, and whose fantasies about the boy next door are crushed after a face to face encounter. Then Cooper introduces the man with the strange fruit who likes to hang around the park & watch the kids play. My only complaint was with the characterization of Ellie, the story's protagonist. At times she was portraited as a young girl (7-8 years old), other times she seemed to act more like a teenager (Cooper never established her age in the story). But anyone looking for dark, yet engaging fiction, can't go wrong with choosing something by James Cooper. 4.5 / 5
The Weird West by William Meikle. A chapbook collection of 3 weird western tales. The stories were more fantasy / horror in nature than western. 3.5 / 5
B
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