The Horror Collection Halloween Edition

Halloween is a night of costumes, candy, bonfires, and ancient traditions, but when darkness falls, some legends refuse to stay buried.

Travel to forgotten towns where impossible rituals continue beneath the harvest moon. Meet haunted children, grieving parents, vengeful scarecrows, hungry jack-o'-lanterns, escaped killers, ancient Scottish curses, restless war ghosts, and sinister spirits waiting behind familiar masks. From nostalgic trick-or-treating and eerie small-town folklore to cosmic nightmares, gothic revenge, psychological terror, and outrageous splatter horror, every story captures a different face of the year's most terrifying night.

Featuring twenty-one chilling tales from some of horror's finest voices—including Brian Hodge, Ronald Kelly, Jeff Strand, Jeffrey Thomas, William Meikle, Gord Rollo, Mark Morris, Brian Moreland, John Everson, Steve Stred, Ryan Colley, Veronica Smith and many more, The Horror Collection: Halloween Edition is packed with unforgettable frights, unsettling legends, and haunting surprises.

So carve your pumpkin, leave the porch light on... and pray that whatever comes knocking isn't looking for candy.

These well-crafted tales make for a perfect October read, or if you love Halloween as much as I do, they are a welcome treat any time of year.

Among my many favorites were Ghosts of Candies Past by Jeff Strand in which a  father discovers something unusual when he checks his kids' Halloween haul. You can always count on this author for a few laughs among the gore.

Marrowvale by Kurt Fawver is a chilling tale of secret Halloween traditions and the writer who is invited to view the festivities.

Sweet Tooth by Brian Moreland is about the struggle Helen faces to keep away from the Halloween candy. Although she will face a new challenge this year with one very special trick-or-treater.

The Boy In The Garden by Callum Pearce is the story of a ghostly visitor who has suddenly been appearing every Halloween for the past 3 years. He seems to be coming much closer to the house this year.

John just wants a pumpkin to carve like every other kid in town, but his father won't allow it. Instead, he must have a tumshie. I wonder who will regret it in Tumshieheid by William Meikle.

Morgan Hayden is 12 years old and new in town. He doesn't know anyone, so he's excited when he finally makes his first friend, but soon he will also meet The Pumpkin King by Steve Stred.

No Halloween anthology would be complete without a babysitter alone in the house with a creepy child, which brings us to Watch Over Smiley by Stephen Crowley.

These were just a few of my favorite treats in this huge volume of 21 tales, guaranteed to satisfy your craving for horror set in the most wonderful time of year.

My thanks to KJK Publishing for the e-ARC

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Crone by Keith Rosson

Eli Lamp is a broken man. An ex-detective, ex-addict, and long-grieving father whose daughter, Hannah, disappeared a decade before, Eli decimated his old life investigating her abduction and is now indebted to the Crooked Wheel, a local drug gang, as an enforcer. He lives in a rundown trailer at the edge of the woods, where he keeps Hannah’s room in pristine condition and tries to make it through one day at a time.

But when the son of the Crooked Wheel’s boss is found viciously murdered in a crime scene that doesn’t seem to add up, Eli receives a new order: Find out who the killer is and your debt to the Wheel is clear forever. You’re free. This pursuit brings him into the orbit of Avery Bryant, Hannah’s best friend and the last person to see her before she went missing. Soon, Eli and Avery are entwined in a hunt for answers that spans decades, stretches the realm of possibility, and brings churning to the surface a conspiracy linking not only these current tragedies, but the buried sorrows of Eli’s past.

And though none of them dare say the word "witch," at least not out loud, something lurks in the woods, bent-backed and black-eyed, clawed and vengeful, looming ever closer. . . .

One night, walking home from a party in the pouring rain, 15-year-old Hannah, who is legally blind, accepts a ride and is never seen again. Her best and only friend, Avery, watched her get into the van, and that is all she knows. She didn't see a license plate or who was driving.

I wanted to know more! I wanted this to be about Hannah and the Crone in the woods! Instead, it's more about her father Eli, and how his life spiraled out of control with an especially grotesque addiction to wire, a fictional drug that is shoved under the toenails. Eli is indebted to a drug dealer for some unknown reason that we don't find out about until the book is practically over, in much the way we don't find out what happened to Hannah or anything about the crone until we nearly reach the finale. 
The middle of the book dragged for me. It was more crime thriller than horror and mainly about rival drug gangs and crooked cops.

I loved Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson, so I was super excited to get a copy of Crone. I wanted to love this as much and I tried hard, but just couldn't swing it. I could not really connect with any of the characters. I didn't like Hannah's friend, and I tried to like her father, but he was already kind of a loser before her disappearance. I wanted more than violence and gore, but I stuck it out to the end and was at last rewarded with some answers. Sometimes I wish a book was longer because I don't want it to end. This was not one of those times. I did want it to end once the truth was finally revealed. Instead, it dragged on about Avery's friend, whose name already escapes me because I didn't care about her either. I would have titled this book Wire, since the majority of it focused on the drug instead of the Crone. You may enjoy it more than I did, but this book was not for me.

My thanks to Random House for the e-ARC

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Kinderlieb by Luisa Colón

Every child deserves to be protected, to have a safe space in the world. And a summer camp in upstate New York called Kindlerlieb promised to be just that: a haven for troubled children.

Instead, eight little campers vanished from Kinderlieb in the summer of 1951, leaving behind unspeakable bloodshed, the stunned, grieving community of Leichen County, and something else—a ruthless manifestation of vengeance that's been sleeping fitfully ever since, a protector simmering with rage and ready to awaken when it is needed.

Decades later, when a makeshift family arrives in Leichen County for a weekend getaway, it's time for the protector to rise again—to give love and care to a little girl in need, and a savage comeuppance to the adults in equal measure.

In the third novel by author Luisa Colón, trauma and rage take the unexpected, massive form of something furry, cuddly, and ready to kill.

 

In the summer of 1951, eight children deemed "troubled" were sent to Camp Kindelieb to rid them of behaviors their parents considered unacceptable. They never returned home, and their bodies were not found among the massacred adults.

In the present day, Gage, his girlfriend Andie, and his daughter Lillith arrive in Leichen County for their first "family" getaway. What is expected to be a peaceful weekend in the scenic, woodsy countryside soon yields way to the reveal of dark secrets and manipulative intentions.

Unimaginable cruelty and the supernatural collide in this twisty horror tale that tricked me from the start. I thought this was going to be about evil, creepy children (and I was fine with that), but it is so much more. I alternated between racing through the pages and forcing myself to put it down because I was enjoying it so much I didn't want it to be over. When I did reach the conclusion, I found myself nodding in approval at the satisfying end.

My thanks to Cemetery Dance Publications for the e-ARC.

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Descension by Edmund Stone

Something is buried beneath Salt Flat.

When Cole Masters moves his family into an aging house on the edge of town, the worst he expects is creaking pipes and sleepless nights. But the sounds in the walls aren't settling noises—and the darkness under the floor isn't empty.

Miles away, a mining operation shuts down without warning. New owners arrive. Strange cargo is delivered deep below the earth. Then the workers start disappearing.

At first, the two worlds don't connect. A restless child. A cut finger. A vent that won't stay closed. Small things. Easy to ignore. Until they aren't.

As Cole digs deeper—into the town, the mine, and the people who run both—he uncovers something far older than Salt Flat. Something broken. Something scattered. Something that has waited a long time to be made whole again. And it's not staying buried.

Now, with his family caught in the middle and the town unraveling around him, Cole is forced to confront a truth no one else is willing to see:

The danger isn't what lies beneath. It's what's coming up. Descension is a relentless supernatural horror novel about what happens when the ground gives way—and something begins to rise from the dark.

I want to call this small-town horror, but Salt Flat has much more going on than your typical down home folksy characters fending off an unknown evil. When Cole Masters, former small town football star turned wannabe writer, turned cop, moves his family into the creaky old house on the edge of town, don't think those noises in the vent are rodents. And if you say, AHA! it's a ghost! You are way off too. (Although you will meet some ghosts in this novel.)

What is it in that vent? Well, honestly, I am not sure, but it's connected to the mine, which has suddenly been closed by the russian mafia, who you might think have something to do with the deal between the Mexican cartel and the hillbilly drug dealers. Am I giving away too much of the plot? I don't think so because you'll barely be a few pages in when it gets even crazier than this.

There are a lot of characters, but there was no worry of confusing who was who because they were very distinctive and impossible to mix up. Descension is an insane wild ride with nearly nonstop action and suspense and several heart in your throat moments. This was my first read by Edmund Stone, but I feel compelled to read Tent Revival now.

My thanks to Crystal Lake Publishing/Sinister Smile Press for the e-ARC.

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