Customer Reviews

In a Lonely Place

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Karl Edward Wagner's intelligent, clearly written tales of terror are among the genre's best, and it is sad that this book is out of print. The story "Sticks," which I first read nearly ten years ago, is still as haunting to me today as it was the day I read it. This story seem like an inspiration (or at least a precursor) for the use of stick bundles in the (far inferior) movie "The Blair Witch Project." "The River of Nights Dreaming," a pull-out-all-the-stops tale of a desperate female prison escapee who stumbles into the midst of some extremely strange and kinky goings-on, is also hard to forget. In fact, there is not a boring or forgettable story in this collection. Most of Wagner's stories aren't excessively subtle, but they are well-crafted, satisfying horror yarns. If you are interested in short horror fiction, you cannot do better than to read Karl Edward Wagner, in my opinion.

This excellent volume of short stories will repay any reader with dividends! Contains not just the classic "Sticks"
but also one of my all-time favorites, ".222 Swift." Find, buy,
and read this book. And won't some publisher reprint it?

For me, theres not much to say about Wagner, except I wish he was still with us, writing. He really had a way of getting inside my head with his work

This is one of the best horror short story collections of the 2nd half of the 20th century. Right up there with Songs of a Dead Dreamer, Height of the Scream, and Sub Rosa.

It's easy to see why Karl Edward Wagner is a cult favorite whose books fetch top dollar in the hardest to find editions. These stories are kind of like the stories you wish Lovecraft had written. Wagner improves on the horror tradition started by Lovecraft. He was a much better writer than Lovecraft, and I hope that Wagner's books get reprinted for a new generation. Some publisher really ought to collect and reprint his horror fiction.