Christmas Eve Shorts: Hark! The Herald Angels Scream ed by Christopher Golden

I'm a huge fan of the tradition of ghost stories on Christmas Eve. As such, reading something along those lines has become something of a tradition of mine for the holiday season.

Blumhouse Books, part of PRH's Anchor imprint had previously put together a Halloween anthology edited by Ellen Datlow and Lisa Morton, my reading choice for that season this year, so when I saw they were putting together a Christmas anthology of horror stories as well, I knew it had to be on my list for the current holiday season. Of course added bonuses for me are 1. the fact that it's short stories and with admittedly limited time to devote to reading, shorts are perfect for this new mom and 2. the collection includes original short stories by some of my FAVORITE current authors - Scott Smith, Seanan McGuire, Sarah Lotz, and Elizabeth Hand just to name a few - and a novella by Sarah Pinborough :)

Beginning with Kelley Armstrong's creepy mummer's tale and ending with Sarah Pinborough's fabulously atmospheric novella, Hark! The Herald Angels Scream has something for every kind of horror fan. And while all not all of the stories are ghost stories - Tim Lebbon's "Home," finds an old man traveling an apocalyptic landscape with a strange companion while Josh Malerman's "Tenets" features an incredibly awkward holiday get together amongst college classmates -, I'll admit I was personally pretty pleased with the number of actual ghost stories that are included (I'm a fan of horror of any kind, but I've admitted many times that ghost stories are my favorite!).  Joe Lansdale's "The Second Floor of the Christmas Hotel," for example, pits two old acquaintances against a mystery in a decrepit hotel, Michael Koryta's "Hiking Through" is a chilling ghost story set along the Appalachian Trail, and Elizabeth Hand's "Farrow Street" takes readers to a piece of London no one would ever want to visit!

Here's the full TOC:

"Absinthe & Angels" by Kelley Armstrong
"Christmas in Barcelona" by Scott Smith
"Fresh as the New-Fallen Snow" by Seanan McGuire
"Love Me" by Thomas E. Sniegoski
"Not Just For Christmas" by Sarah Lotz
"Tenets" by Josh Malerman
"Good Deeds" by Jeff Strand
"It's a Wonderful Knife" by Christopher Golden
"Mistletoe and Holly" by James A. Moore
"Snake's Tail" by Sarah Langan
"The Second Floor of the Christmas Hotel" by Joe R. Lansdale
"Farrow Street" by Elizabeth Hand
"Doctor Velocity: A Story of the Fire Zone" by Jonathan Maberry
"Yankee Swap" by John M. McIlveen
"Honor Thy Mother" by Angela Slatter
"Home" by Tim Lebbon
"Hiking Through" by Michael Koryta
The Hangman's Bride by Sarah Pinborough

Whether you partake in the Christmas Eve scary story game or not, this collection is perfect reading for any horror fan facing a hectic holiday schedule! Definitely one to add to your reading list before this year is out.

Ararat by Christopher Golden

When an earthquake reveals a hidden cave high on the side of Turkey's Mount Ararat, historians and explorers are certain it could finally mean the discovery of the Ark of legend. Meryam and Adam are willing to put off planning their upcoming wedding to be the first to the cave, securing the discovery and its documentation as their own.

But the adventure and find of a lifetime take an odd turn when the crew uncovers remains that defy all explanation. Specialists, including Ben Walker - a member of the National Science Foundation (a front for his real position at DARPA) -, are flown in to help just before a looming storm is set to hit. With everything Walker has seen and experienced, he considers himself a pro at handling strange. But Ararat is unlike anything he's ever experienced.

As the weather descends, the crew begins to turn on one another. Is it the madness and obsession that comes with such a massive discovery? Or something else?

I was dying to get my hands on a copy of Christopher Golden's latest. Pitched as the perfect read for fans of Dan Simmons's The Terror, it certainly seemed right up my alley.

And it was, to an extent.

The mountain setting, the pending storm, the avalanche that sets everything up, not to mention obvious tension between the Turkish guides and Meryam and Adam. Oh, and tension between Meryam and Adam themselves... It was a perfect set up for a chilling and tension filled tale.

And that's all before our super secret DARPA spy arrives.

Ararat was guaranteed to be fun and it definitely delivered in that regard. But, I wanted so much more! I wanted more depth and more detail. I wanted more atmosphere. I even wanted more horrific happenings!

While I enjoyed Ararat, I didn't love it. It felt like a story that had been stripped down the bare bones, blockbuster style (you know, like a 120 minute film cut down to 90 to suit a short attention span). I wanted to meat and the fat, all the details that would have fleshed out the characters, the setting, and the evil hiding inside Ararat.

Rating: 3/5

Pre Pub Book Buzz: Ararat by Christopher Golden

How in the world are we already in November, folks? I don't know where this year has gone! And now I'm looking towards 2017 releases for my TBR, yeesh.

I've had my eye on Christopher Golden's upcoming Ararat for quite some time now. It doesn't come out until April, but holy crap does it sound amazing!

Here's a bit about the book from Goodreads:

When a newly engaged couple climbs Mount Ararat in Turkey, an avalanche forces them to seek shelter inside a massive cave uncovered by the snow fall. The cave is actually an ancient, buried ship that many quickly come to believe is really Noah’s Ark. When a team of scholars, archaeologists, and filmmakers make it inside the ark for the first time, they discover an elaborate coffin in its recesses. The artifact tempts their professional curiosity; so they break it open. Inside, they find an ugly, misshapen cadaver—not the holy man that they expected, a hideous creature with horns. A massive blizzard blows in, trapping them in that cave thousands of meters up the side of a remote mountain…but they are not alone.

See!

So yeah, it's Christopher Golden PLUS they're comparing Ararat to Dan Simmons's The Terror, which you may recall is one of my favorites. Here's hoping that by the time this one comes out in April that we're well beyond any power outage worthy snow storms! I'm all for mood reading, but I'd be happy not to repeat my frigid Terror reading experience. 

Short Fiction Friday: Seize the Night edited by Christopher Golden

Vampires have had a tough time of it lately. Burnout, I mean. They were the HOT topic for quite some time and then the reading public seemed to lose their taste for them. It happens. A glut of books all on one subject generally does mean readers are going to sour to it eventually.

But even if you're in this boat, the new Seize the Night anthology is so worth your time!

The premise of the anthology is simply to make vampires scary once again. The authors (a FANTASTIC lineup) take their bloodsuckers from mythology and folklore all around the world, creating a collection of truly frightening tales that is a serious genre standout!

And did I mention they're scary vampires? Yeah, I'm not kidding. These authors took their job seriously in bringing vampires back to their terrifying (and deserving) roots!

Scott Smith (SCOTT SMITH!!!) kicks off the collection with what has to be hands down one of my favorite stories of late: a young woman takes a job as a caretaker for an elderly couple and things don't go very well for her. Seanan McGuire's outing is equally excellent and will make you reconsider the wonder of fireflies. Kelley Armstrong tackles the viral apocalypse and the decline of humanity in her tale. And John Ajvide Lindqvist offers up a tale that may possibly be set in the same universe as his wildly popular Let the Right One In and follow up short "Let the Old Dreams Die." These are just a few of my favorites - it really is overall a fabulous collection and each of the stories is brand spanking new for the collection.

Here's the full TOC for you:

"Up in Old Vermont" by Scott Smith
"Something Lost, Something Gained" by Seanan McGuire
"On the Dark Side of Sunlight Basin" by Michael Koryta
"The Neighbors" by Sherrilyn Kenyon
"Paper Cuts" by Gary A. Braunbeck
"Miss Fondevant" by Charlaine Harris
"In a Cavern, in a Canyon" by Laird barron
"Whiskey and Light" by Dana Cameron
"We Are All Monsters Here" by Kelley Armstrong
"May the End be Good" by Tim Lebbon
"Mrs. Popkin" by Dan Choan and Lynda Barry
"Direct Report" by Leigh Perry
"Shadow and Thirst" by John Langan
"Mother" by Joe McKinney
"Blood" by Robert Shearman
"The Yellow Death" by Lucy A. Snyder
"The Last Supper" by Brian Keene
"Separator" by Rio Youers
"What Kept You So Long?" by John Ajvide Lindqvist
"Blue Hell" by David Wellington

This is - as with Slasher Girls & Monster Boys from last week - a seriously fantastic collection of tales. It's one to savor, too. Rather than zoom through it, as I was tempted to, I saved it, reading a tale or two a day and in between other reads. It stretched out the scary and tempered the terror a bit.

Trust me, readers, this is a collection you want, need, and have to get your hands on!

Rating: 5/5

Four Summoner's Tales by Kelly Armstrong, Christopher Golden, David Liss, and Jonathan Maberry

One prompt, four authors, four very different stories. This is the concept behind Four Summoner's Tales a collection of novellas featuring Kelly Armstrong, Christopher Golden, David Liss, and Jonathan Maberry. According to the intro, Golden and Maberry conceived of the idea over dinner one evening. Their prompt was just one sentence: A strange visitor comes to town, offering to raise the townsfolk's dearly departed from the dead - for a price. With that in mind, they chose two additional authors and all set out to create their own tales.

In Armstrong's "Suffer the Children" a town devastated by a diphtheria outbreak welcomes a man who claims to be able to raise their children from the dead. But of course it comes at a price. Addie and her foster family are certain that this is no miracle and must discover the truth before the town is too far gone.

Golden's "Pipers" a small Texas town has seen unimaginable tragedy: over twenty people gunned down in an increasingly escalating war with a Mexican drug cartel. Enoch has come to offer them a new option. He can bring back their dead, and with their help, bring down the cartel. 

In Liss's "A Bad Season for Necromancy" In eighteenth-century England, a man has a plan to get out from under his father's thumb. He kills his father, steals his little bit of money, and moves to the city where he now calls himself January. Here is plans to find a wealthy wife and leave his past behind. But his ghosts aren't so happy to be left behind and his plan is ruinously revealed. When he discovers a book that will allow him to raise the dead, he thinks that surely all his problems will disappear. He's greatly mistaken. His troubles have only just begun.

And finally Maberry's "Alive Day" features Captain Joe Ledger on a mission to recover a lost team of soldiers in Afghanistan. The team, codenamed Rattlesnake, went dark while attempting to stop a group of drug traffickers said to be moving more than just opium. Rattlesnake ended up running into something much worse than terrorists, but it isn't until his own team arrives to investigate that Ledger begins to understand. 

Each of these four stories is obvious very different from the others. Not only is it a great collection, but it's a wonderful example of how even one core concept can bring about in quite different results.

Rating: 4/5

The Monster's Corner

We'll see how much reading I get in these next few days. I'm helping man work's exhibitor's booth at Mountain & Plains this weekend. Should be super fun and interesting -- my first official trade show. I'm interested to see if the ABA folks will be talking about next year's World Book Night efforts.

Anywho. Tomorrow's October 1! You know what that means? I'll be amping up the horror reads (because they all seem to come out right about now). I kick started it this week with The Exorcist, which I am happy to say that either age or reading rather than watching made much more appealing than my first go around with the flick.

I also dove into The Monster's Corner, which reminded me just how much I've come to love short stories. Anthologies like this give you a taste of so many different authors and styles. You may love some, you may hate some, and you may say, "Hey. I haven't read him/her before and now I want more!"

The contributors in this one surprised me a bit. Sharyn McCrumb, whose Ballad series is in my TBR list, Dana Stabenow, and Chelsea Cain (who writes about monsters anyway, so I'm not sure why I was surprised) are all well known mystery/suspense authors I didn't expect to see is a horror anthology.

Some might be surprised to see David Liss on the list since he's known for historical mysteries. Fans of these kinds of collections, though, will remember his story "What Maisie Knew" from in last year's The New Dead -- also ed by Christopher Golden. (It and was one of my favorites in that anthology!)

I should mention that while Monster's Corner features "monsters" exclusively, Golden points out that there are no zombies in this book. Instead, Liss's story features an unexpected teen creature that made for a fun and twisted tale. Lauren Groff's fairy tale-like dystopian set story, "Rue," was another of my favorites here.

I admit that I was super excited to see Sarah Pinborough as a contributor -- I love her work and have two of her books in my TBR right now. David Moody and Michael Marshall Smith are two more authors I've read that I was pleased to see took part.

Here's the complete author list (and bonus comments -- I haven't read all of the stories just yet, though):

David Liss

Jonathan Maberry -- always a favorite

Lauren Groff

John McIlveen -- "Succumb" was a highly, highly disturbing introduction to this author for me

Kevin J. Anderson -- I've actually read his X-Files books, so he's not totally new to me, but I was pleasantly surprised by his story

Sharyn McCrumb

David Moody

Kelley Armstrong -- I've come to her work recently and love her

Nate Kenyon -- a new horror great that everyone should read

Dana Stabenow

Chelsea Cain

Tom Piccirilli -- Golden and Piccirilli both contributed to a novella collection called Four Dark Nights, which I read AGES ago.

Sarah Pinborough

Heather Graham -- I think this will be my first short by her

Jeff Strand -- this will be my intro to Strand's work

Tanarive Due -- another one I'm discovering here

Michael Marshall Smith

Gary A. Braunbeck -- another author I love whose backlist titles are in the TBR

Simon R. Green -- I'm actually familiar with Green, but haven't read any of his series yet