I got this softcover at the Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival in Haverhill MA, which I attended with my sister and brother-in-law (who has a story in the book). The book's a labor of love in which the editors sent out wide-ranging invitations to as diverse a bunch of authors as they could reach, and then did blind readings of the submissions so as to choose the best stories without regard to whether the authors were well-known or not. The panel discussion on how they did this really impressed me!

Later: Very good anthology indeed, with some great variations on many horror tropes - and some inventive new concepts as well. I enjoyed the entire collection, and especially liked:

"Midnight Sun" by Andrew Bourelle - a tale of an Alaskan Inupiat man coming to terms with the encroachment of an oil pipeline, while finding his way to a rather wolfish heritage.

"The Birthing Pool" by Eoin Murphy - a young couple goes to a remote village on the seacoast to have their baby, only to find that there are local traditions that make a chilling demand of them.

"Elegy" by Sarah Johnson - a touching ghost story about love and loss and remembrance, with a transgender character at its heart.

"Unto the Next" by Amanda Helms - this one's a haunted-house story with a very dark twist, and some unsettling mother-daughter elements.

"At Least the Chickens Are All Right" by Trisha J. Wooldridge - possibly my favorite story here, this one's a very creepy and disturbing tale of a spreading plague of some sort - but with a dark-comedy element that makes it memorable.

"Brother Mine" by Rohit Sawant - a scarily surreal story which opens with the narrator discovering that there's a kind of miniature black hole in her brother's head. As one does, she spends some time dropping things into it just to see if it continues to work, but eventually the experiments go to a very dark place indeed, and lead our hapless protagonist to discover something of what's on the other side.

"Records of the Dead" by John Linwood Grant - this one's a fun little look at film history, with the narrator working for her eccentric but well-off aunt to try and track down the details surrounding a few fragments of film from the 1920's. It goes... to some interesting places.

"Angelmutter" by David Surface - a desperate young mother has taken her child and fled an abusive relationship, not really knowing where she wants to go. A sympathetic stranger offers her a very unusual way out...

And there's much more here; quite the assortment!

I'm adding this book to imawinn2's shrinking bookbox, which will be on its way soon. Hope someone enjoys it!

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Chosen from imawinn2's Shrinking Bookbox.

Thank you for the wishlist book!

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Why did I put a horror book on my wishlist! Hahahahaha!

I read several, but not all... I'm a chicken when it comes to horror. Surprisingly, not all I would classify as horror. Such as "Midnight Sun", which is a great story! And some had me keeping the light on after I went to bed. I'm looking at you "The Pale Mouth"! And it's looking back! Eek!

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One of the starting books for the Here Be Dragons Bookbox!

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