I got this softcover at the new independent bookstore in Manchester NH, the Bookery. I enjoyed Hill's short stories in 20th Century Ghosts; this collection contains four novellas, and I'll have to see how they work for me. (I've liked his short stories better than his full-length novels.)

Later: Entertaining collection, nicely weird!

"Snapshot" features a camera with odd side effects, which the protagonist finally learns to understand - and which includes an homage to memory. Nostalgia-with-little-creepy-notes, reminding me a bit of Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes".

"Loaded" is the darkest tale here, about the path of a loaded gun and the ways in which the fates of the characters might have changed, if only... (The ending of this one is brutal and chilling. {shudder})

"Aloft" - oh, this one's fun! Er, for certain values of "fun". Very surreal and weird, yet centered on a man's desperate attempt to woo a woman who's not interested. He goes skydiving with her and other friends despite being terrified - and when his panic gets him dropped onto a very strange "cloud" he finds himself in an utterly strange situation. While he wasn't an especially sympathetic character, his adventure was so intriguingly bizarre that I enjoyed it.

"Rain" is a sharp little apocalyptic-horror tale in which the rain suddenly becomes deadly. Part of the story deals with the disaster and aftermath, but when the protagonist figures out what started the plague - and the reason behind it - the story takes quite a twist. Very effective!

I left this book in this amusingly-decorated Little Free Library; hope someone enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in MA here.]