The Best of Cemetery Dance II Edited by Richard Chizmar

About the Book:
The Best of Cemetery Dance: Volume Two showcases the very finest short stories from issues 26 to 50 of Cemetery Dance magazine, picking up where the acclaimed and award-winning first "Best of" volume left off! Featuring a virtual "who's who" of today's greatest authors of dark fiction, The Best of Cemetery Dance: Volume Two will be one of the most important anthologies of the year. Just a handful of the contributors include Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Peter Straub, Bentley Little, Michael Marshall Smith, Ray Garton, Jack Ketchum, Douglas Clegg, Poppy Z. Brite, Joe R. Lansdale, Nancy A. Collins, Peter Crowther, Norman Partridge, Ed Gorman, William F. Nolan, F. Paul Wilson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Simon Clark, Richard Christian Matheson, David J. Schow, Stewart O'Nan, Glen Hirshberg, Ramsey Campbell, and dozens of others! Cemetery Dance magazine has been published for more than thirty years now, and is the winner of the World Fantasy Award and the International Horror Critics Guild Award, as well as a nominee for both the British Fantasy Award and the American Horror Award. Don't miss what's sure to be one of the most talked about anthologies of the year!

This was one of the two anthologies I brought with me on vacation, but being a whopping 756 pages it turned out to be the only one I had time to read.

This is a massive tome with so many authors that I feel confident in saying there is literally something for everyone in this book. Not every story was a huge hit with me but there were several I would rate 5 stars and a multitude of 4 star stories. There were only a couple I skimmed or skipped due to not holding my interest. The table of contents reads like a who's who of horror. There are many familiar names and only a few that I had not heard of, but now that I have I will be looking into what else they have written.

Just a few of the stand out 5 star stories would be Graham Masterton's Ballyhooly Boy about a haunted house that needs a particular owner, The Goddess of Cruelty by Thomas Tessier is a very dark love story with a nasty twist, The Riders by Bentley Little, which is about the last remaining socially acceptable prejudice, fat shaming, taken to a horrifying extreme.

If you love short horror stories as much as I do you really need a copy of this massive anthology.

4 out of 5 stars

Get a copy
 

The Lighthouse Witches by C.J. Cooke

Two sisters go missing on a remote Scottish island. Twenty years later, one is found--but she's still the same age as when she disappeared. The secrets of witches have reached across the centuries in this chilling Gothic thriller from the author of the acclaimed The Nesting.

When single mother Liv is commissioned to paint a mural in a 100-year-old lighthouse on a remote Scottish island, it's an opportunity to start over with her three daughters--Luna, Sapphire, and Clover. When two of her daughters go missing, she's frantic. She learns that the cave beneath the lighthouse was once a prison for women accused of witchcraft. The locals warn her about wildlings, supernatural beings who mimic human children, created by witches for revenge. Liv is told wildlings are dangerous and must be killed.

Twenty-two years later, Luna has been searching for her missing sisters and mother. When she receives a call about her youngest sister, Clover, she's initially ecstatic. Clover is the sister she remembers--except she's still seven years old, the age she was when she vanished. Luna is worried Clover is a wildling. Luna has few memories of her time on the island, but she'll have to return to find the truth of what happened to her family. But she doesn't realize just how much the truth will change her.

In 1998, with nowhere else to go and running from a secret, Olivia Stay and her three daughters arrived on a remote Scottish island where she had been commissioned to paint a mural. She is given very little instruction, just a diagram of what she is meant to paint inside the crumbling lighthouse.

 The island is rife with a dark history of murder and mayhem but Olivia is out of options and at least able to have a roof over her children's heads which is something they have lacked since her husband's death. At some point, we know not why, the eldest and youngest daughter disappear, and the middle child is abandoned in the woods before Olivia also goes missing. Now all these years later that middle child is a grown and pregnant woman who has never given up hope of finding out what happened to her family, when out of the blue she is told her baby sister has been found. Her joy at this news soon turns to shock and dread when she rushes to be reunited with her sister, and finds not the grown woman she expected, but a 7 year old child who thinks she has only been gone for days instead of decades.

 Legend, myth, and folklore bubble over into the modern day in this chilling story of witches and changelings. Multi layered complex characters weave together a terrifying narrative told on three timelines. The ever increasing suspense kept me glued to the pages. Highly recommended to all fans of horror and folklore.

5 out of 5 stars

I received an advance copy for review.

Get a copy

About the author

C. J. Cooke is an award-winning poet and novelist published in twenty-three languages. She teaches creative writing at the University of Glasgow, where she also researches the impact of motherhood on women's writing and creative writing interventions for mental health.

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

 

This is the story of a serial killer. A stolen child. Revenge. Death. And an ordinary house at the end of an ordinary street.

All these things are true. And yet they are all lies...

You think you know what's inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you've read this story before. That's where you're wrong.

In the dark forest at the end of Needless Street, lies something buried. But it's not what you think...

I'm not going to talk about the plot at all. You need to read it to believe how ingenious it is and I don't want to spoil anything.

This book will twist you up, wring you out, and throw you on the floor. It's that unsettling. I try not to gush over books but this one starts off good and then it gets better fast. 

I'm dizzy with the details of such an intricate story line and the way it all came together. The synopsis claims "It's not what you think" and how many times have you heard that before? Except this time it's true. I don't care how many psychological thrillers you have read or how quickly you have figured out the endings of any of them. No matter what you think, and no matter where you believe this story is headed it's not. Anything else I can say seems pointless so I'm just stopping here stunned by the brilliance of this novel.

5 out of 5 stars

I received an advance copy for review.

Get a copy

About the author

The Haunting Season: Eight Ghostly Tales for Long Winter Nights

Long before Dickens and James popularized the tradition, the shadowy nights of winter have been a time for people to gather together by the flicker of candlelight and experience the intoxicating thrill of a spooky tale.

Now nine bestselling, award-winning authors - all of them master storytellers of the sinister and the macabre - bring the tradition to vivid life in a spellbinding new collection of original spine-tingling tales.

Taking you from the frosty fens of Cambridgeshire, to the snow-covered grounds of a country estate, to a bustling London Christmas market, these mesmerizing stories will capture your imagination and serve as your indispensable companion to cold, dark nights. So curl up, light a candle, and fall under the ghostly spell of winters past.

In need of a break from the summer heat I delved in to The Haunting Season with it's cold, driving rain, drifting snow storms, and of course ghostly apparitions.

In my favorite stories I discovered a haunted wheel chair, met a new mother anxious to protect her child, a woman seeking shelter from her abusive husband, who finds help not from family but from an unexpected entity, and a recovering alcoholic who meets an influence much darker than the drink. 

These chilling stories are a perfect way to welcome in the shorter days and cooler nights. Not all of the spirits have evil intent, but even a well meaning warning of impending doom can be frightening when it comes from beyond the grave.

I would recommend it to all who enjoy a good old fashioned ghost story.

4 out of 5 stars 

I received an advance copy for review.

Available for pre-order