Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre

by Laird Barron, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Norman Partridge, John Shirley, Maria V Snyder, and Carrie Vaughn

Paula Guran (Editor)

• The farther we've gotten from the magic and mystery of the past, the more
  we've come to love Halloween — the one time each year when the mundane is
  overturned in favor of the bizarre, the "other side" is closest, and everyone
  can become anyone (or anything) they wish... and sometimes what they don't.
  
• Introducing nineteen original stories from mistresses and masters of the
  dark celebrate the most fantastic, enchanting, spooky, and supernatural of
  holidays.

• ISBN10: 1607014025
• ISBN13: 9781607014027
• Publish Date: 10 September 2013
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Prime Books
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[Nessa Luna]

Read this review, and many more on my blog October Tune!

I won this book in a giveaway at Wensend, and I had been excited for this book for a while! I love Halloween, and I really like scary stories, so this book was perfect for me. It took me a while to actually finish the book, because I didn’t want to rush it, I wanted to read one story at a time, and not finish the book in a couple of days or so. Even though this book consist of several short stories, I will review and rate the book as one.

There were a couple of stories that I really liked, such as “The Mummy’s Heart”, “The Halloween Men” and “For the Removal of Unwanted Guests”; but there were also some stories that I didn’t really like. One of them was “Whilst the Night Rejoices Profound and Still”, I actually tried to read it – but couldn’t get myself to continue, so I skipped it and went over to the next story.

In the end, I enjoyed this book a lot. Most of the stories were well written, though sometimes I had to read several passages twice to understand what it was saying (I still don’t get what “Thirteen” was about).

I do wish some of the stories had been longer, made into actual standalone books (like “The Halloween Men”, mainly because I like Maria V. Snyder as a writer).

If you want to read a nice book with Halloween stories, I certainly recommend Halloween: Magic, Mystery and the Macabre!