Under the Moon in Illinois Stories from a haunted land by Kipling Knox

 Welcome to the fictional town of Middling, Illinois, where ghosts conspire to redeem a troubled community. Combining social satire with humor and tragedy, these interconnected stories explore the challenges we face in an anxious time. We follow a cast of midwestern characters, dead and alive: a farmer widow, an earnest criminal, a corrupt pastor, teen-agers on a date, a phantom hitchhiker, time-traveling professors, the spirit of a guilty ad man—and one brave woman journalist, in particular. At times dark, these tales are inherently hopeful.

Stories from this collection have been published or recognized in the Madison Review, Narrative Magazine, the TulipTree Review, the Bellingham Review, and the Whitefish Review.

It's a good thing that Middling is not a real town because it's a very unnerving place to find yourself.

Here I met a woman who lives in a school house with her children. It had a feel of being back in the 1800s except they had cell phones. I also tagged along on a date with a couple of teenagers and honestly could not tell whether this boy wanted to date this girl or kill her, and whether this girl wanted to date this boy, or was just using him. I met more than one ghost in and out of more than one cemetery, including a road trip with Resurrection Mary.

Under The Moon In Illinois is a collection of loosely connected stories, even though at first I failed to see how they were related other than the setting. Some of the tales that I enjoyed the most also irked me when they ended and I felt that they were over too abruptly, but fear not, the final story ties the book together and resolves some of the loose ends.

These are not horror stories per se but there are enough ghosts and mysterious happenstance throughout, told with enough suspense and humor to keep me engaged. 

I know that a lot of you will pick up an anthology or a collection and read a story or two in between reading novels. I often do that as well, but I would not recommend it here. For maximum enjoyment, you should read this book all the way through as if it were a novel. Otherwise, you may just feel like you walked into a movie that was halfway over and the film broke before you made it to the end.

3.75 rounded up to 4 out of 5 stars

My thanks to the author and Prairie State Press.

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About the Author

Kipling Knox is an author, publisher, and conservationist with roots in Washington State and Illinois. After two decades as a software engineering manager in Seattle, he returned home to create books in print and audio, with original illustrations. He also works to promote biodiversity, even on a backyard scale, with a special interest in prairie lands.

In the past year, Kipling’s short stories have been published or recognized in the Madison Review, Narrative Magazine, the TulipTree Review, the Bellingham Review, and the Whitefish Review.