Book Reviews: Two Short Story Collections

I've always had a love of short stories. I find them a great way to catch a first glimpse of an author's style, helping me decide whether or not to pursue any novels by that particular author. Plus, to me, a short story is more difficult to craft, creating a story that draws you in and ends (or sometimes leaves you hanging) in a brief span of time. So I am a fan of those authors that excel with short stories, such as the authors of these two collections:

The Complete John Silence Stories by Algernon Blackwood

Considered one of the best writers of weird fiction -- tales of the supernatural, other worlds, ghosts, etc. -- Algernon Blackwood created a psychic detective know as John Silence. Think of Silence as an early ghost hunter, helping those suffering from ghostly or supernatural experiences and working to convince others that the spirit world does exist and can have a dangerous effect on the living. This collection of six tales shows the charismatic Silence at his best, whether exorcising a nasty spirit from a house in A Physical Invasion, protecting an young woman from a werewolf in The Camp of the Dog, or confronting the restless spirit of a mummy transported to early 20th century England in Nemesis of Fire.

And, as I wrote in a previous post, all the stories are atmospheric, filled with tremendous attention to detail and move at such a pace as to build the tension so that the reader feels like one of the characters, looking over his or her should at the slightest sound. If you are in the mood for a stories that truly creepy, then The Complete John Silence Stories is the collection for you.


The Collection by Bentley Little

If you're in the mood to be scared, then the stories in Bentley Little's The Collection will do just that. Each of the stories begins with a brief blurb about how he came up with the idea -- from everyday things about which no one really bothers. Like those random scraps of paper and trash that litter every gutter and fence no matter the city: those little papers have an agenda of their own in Paperwork. Or how about the guy who delivers the phone books: what if he never left you along, like in the story The Phonebook Man. Even boiling a pot of macaroni and cheese becomes a task from Hell in the short story Blood. Little doesn't just stop with skewering the views of the mundane. He also turns his view on more heady topics, such as what if everything we knew about George Washington wasn't the truth? A simple piece of paper with the terrifying words sheds new light on the former President in The Washingtonians. Or, what if the United States was still part of the British empire, but the government was keeping it under wraps, as in The Colony?

The Collection is a fantastic -- collection -- of deftly told bizarre and terrifying tales that will definitely cause a shiver or three to spill down your spine.

Image for John Silence from Librarything. Image for The Collection from Fantastic Fiction.