Customer Reviews

Apparitions

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Writer/editor Michael Kelly brings together an elegant and exquisitely entertaining collection of otherworldly excursions into shadow and darkness. Christopher Conlon opens the anthology with a moody contemporary gothic tale, "A Certain Slant of Light", about a past-haunted poet who awakens to grisly evidence that she has unexpectedly given birth to...something. Joel Lane explores the predatory nature of Venice, Italy in "High Water", followed by Jessica Reisman's flash fiction," Incantation", that reveals a supernatural natural world. Guilt proves to be a fertile ground for ghosts in Paul Finch's "Men of Old", ghost hunters find far more than they were searching for in Patricia J. Esposito's "Finishing the Dig", murderous siblings play deadly games in Michael R. Colangelo's "Behind the Black", and a writer's personal ghosts emerge through her stories in Gemma Files' "The Jacaranda Smile". In Iain Rowan's "There Stand the Dead", a young man does far more than just see dead people, and ghosts infest a dude ranch in Barbara Roden's "Home on the Range". Ghosts sometimes appear before death in Simon Bestwick's "The Suicide Chair", Gary Braunbeck's tale, "Whisper My Name", is a study of supernatural and sexual passion, and a grieving father's search for his missing daughter ends with an unexpected discovery in Gary McMahon's "Proof". Closing the anthology is Steve Duffy's riveting and very modern update of the classic Victorian ghost story concerning a terrifying midnight encounter on a cold winter's night. No matter what the weather might be in your part of the world, you will feel the chill of APPARITIONS. Brrr