"A sinister jack-in-the-box haunts the lives of children who owned it, a stray cat does nightly battle to protect his adopted family, and a boy raised in a graveyard confronts the much more troubled world of the living in this wonderful book of short stories by master storyteller Neil Gaiman.

These eleven stories range from the scary to the whimsical, the fantastical to the humorous - each a different journey in which the reader encounters the rich and wonderful imagination of a writer who knows how to thrill and satisfy his audience."

I bought this a couple of years ago in Ireland, from an awesome bookstore called Chapters. M is for Magic caught my eye, because I love Neil Gaiman’s books and I hadn’t yet read this short story collection. It has actually quite a lot stories that I’ve read before, but I found some new stories also. The best stories were Troll Bridge (A new story for me and made me want to read more about trolls written by Gaiman), Sunbird, Witch’s Headstone and Instructions.

For oofiri.

Thank you, slipperbunny! I've read many of Gaiman's books, and so far I've liked Neverwhere and The Graveyard Book best. And American Gods. Let's see about this one.

Finished yesterday. In the foreword Gaiman tells he has loved short stories since he was a child. For me, they usually flash past too quickly and are gone. I much prefer to settle down into a long story that pulls me deep into its world where I can drop back instantly whenever I read, with no delay getting to know my new whereabouts.

That said, these stories were a pleasure, nicely scary and funny in turn. The last one, Witch's Headstone, is a chapter from The Graveyard Book, a teaser in a way, as it was the next book to be published. I found Four and Twenty Blackbirds hilarious: a perfect Sam Spade detective in a world of Mother Goose, investigating the death of Humpty Dumpty. Hard-boiled indeed!

In Kirjan vuosi 2015 challenge, this is my number 7, a collection of short stories.

To be released.

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