Some of the stories in this 10-tale compendium creep up on you slowly, and others start out at a breakneck pace, dispassionately nihilistic. They're all gripping. They're light on gore and heavy on effect, with a diverse array of subjects. In terms of locale, there's a lot of northeast America here. While the scope of a few of the stories feels a little Lovecraftian, the style feels more like Joe Hill. This is a quick read, but it's not light. Recommend to those who enjoy the gut punch of a strong horror tale.

This collection of horror stories rapidly covered multiple horror genres and tropes. While it was an enjoyable read, none of the stories really stayed with me.

I'm a little surprised to read the quote from Stephen King on this author as being so influential, though I can see a similar tone to some of S.K.'s short stories.

It's certainly not a collection you would go wrong with, but would probably be more enjoyed by those wanting a spooky Halloween read, dipping their toes into horror for one month a year.

If you like short horror stories then this book is for you! This book was originally published in the 1980's. The stories still resonate today as pure horror. Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for this ARC.

This is a collection of short stories that was originally published in 1980, but re-released and I hadn't seen it before or heard of the author. There was some fairly gruesome Horror, but presented with unusual perspectives and very well-written.

The first story, Diary of a Werewolf, definitely grabbed my attention and made me wonder what else lay in store through the collection. This was followed by an original take on a zombie theme, clueing me in that we were going to cover several sub-genres of Horror before we were done.

The stories are generally of a high calibre and cover a variety of supernatural entities as well as the odd murder story, always with a creep factor. It's hard to choose a stand-out in a collection all written by the same author, but The Willow Platform stuck in my mind and Horror at Chiltern Castle was a truly horrific tale in the Gothic vein. I liked the final story too, which was a time slip called The House on Hazel Street.

Overall a very good collection.

Great short book of short stories! A must read in my opinion. Loved it, so glad I requested this from Netgalley to review.

I received a digital copy of this classic collection for review from NetGalley . Reading this anthology again was a nostalgic return to my youth. I discovered Brennan (and many other of the 20th century masters) during the 1980s. Included in this collection are ten of his best stories, including "Diary of a Werewolf," "The Pavilion," "Disappearance," and the chilling "The Horror at Chilton Castle." The latter piece is remarkable for its evocation of a gothic atmosphere as well as an utterly visceral horror. It's a story so disturbing that the great Ramsey Campbell included it in a collection of tales that, by his own admission, frightened even him.(See his anthology Fine Frights). Another great inclusion is the somewhat-Lovecraftian "The Willow Platform," a personal favorite from my first discovery of Brennan all those years ago. A couple of stories suffer from one-dimensional plots with little or no resolution, especially the "radioactive zombie goes on a killing rampage" of "The Corpse of Charlie Rull," but the stories are entertaining nonetheless. The collection really only suffers in that it's incomplete; the original edition included the stories "Slime" and "Canavan's Back Yard," a tale which could be Brennan's masterpiece. The omission of these two tales from this edition is puzzling and is the only reason for my rating of 4 rather than 5 stars. Stephen King's introduction to the Berkeley edition would also have been a welcome addition. Nevertheless, this is an excellent collection of tales and would be well worth purchasing. My thanks to the publishers for providing me with a copy.

Never heard of Brennan before coming across this collection, and now I'm kicking myself a little since I feel I've missed out. Adored the old school classic horror feel of these stories.

Diary of a Werewolf and Disappearance were the standouts.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc.

This was a short but fun anthology featuring stories of madness, sorrowful memories, and murder.
My favorites were Diary of a Werewolf in which a recovering drug addict begins to feel a strong compulsion to run wild in the woods, and Pavilion in which a murderer returns to the scene of his crime. The rest were just ok reads for me, though others may enjoy them more than I did. If you are into short horror stories give this one a read.

First published in 1980, The Shapes Of Midnight might have been scary way back when; today, not so much. As I was reading the stories I got the impression that if the book had been written today it would fall into the YA category. It's not to say that the stories within aren't solid little spookfests; The Diary of a Werewolf, The Impulse to Kill and The Pavilion were three standouts for me. However, as well-written as they are I just never felt that frightened by them. Who knows? Maybe I've become jaded.

The Shapes of Midnight by Joseph Payne Brennan

I went into this book blind. I did not know who the author was, or when the book was written, only that the cover looked interesting and it was in one of my favorite genres (the horror anthology). I am very glad that I did, because it was like some kind of mirror into my own reading history.

In the afterword, there is a quote from Stephen King that calls Brennan "one of the most effective writers in the horror genre" and I have to agree. Not because of the actual chills in the stories (honestly, I didn't find that many) but because of the obvious influence he had on the genre, particularly Stephen King himself.

Reading the book, unaware of the history behind it, I felt myself thinking "This would have been perfect for Weird Tales." more than once. I was, of course, 100% right. Brennan wrote hundreds of stories for that classic magazine.
I also found myself thinking, "This guy loved him some Stephen King." It turns out I had it backwards!

These stories are nothing all that unique to the experienced reader of horror, and the "twists" in them are not twists at all, today. But this is because Brennan literally created many of them.

Of the stories in this collection, I found I liked The Pavillion best. A story of murder, guilt, and revenge(?) from beyond the grave, I found myself imagining it shot for shot in some early 80s horror anthology movie (Creepshow, of course).

Disappearance is another proto-King story. Indeed, I can see direct influences of several King stories here--the taciturn farmer with a secret, the missing family member, the grisly discovery. They all seem buried deep in our horror conscience now, thanks to stories like this.

As horror, honestly, there probably isn't much here for the modern fan, but as a glimpse into the roots of the genre this is a very interesting (and still quite fun!) read.

I'd like to thank the publisher for the review copy!

This collection of short horror stories by Joseph Payne Brennan would have had a lot more historical significance if it had included all of the book’s original stories. Instead, the publisher opted to remove two of them, thereby making it an incomplete set.

Aside from that, Brennan’s work provides an interesting time capsule of the horror writing style of the late ‘70s/early ‘80s. Stephen King once raved about this book, which actually seems really odd now since Brennan continuously broke King’s rules for writing. For instance. in one sentence, Brennan somehow managed to cram three adverbs, passive voice, and showing instead of telling.

These qualities, combined with a bit of casual racism and the general vibe of telling scary stories around a campfire, really dates the book.

It was an interesting read as a horror time capsule, but it lacks the compelling, literary nature of the genre’s classics. It also falls short in the gore department, meaning it doesn’t quite connect with either of the two main types of horror readers.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

I received an ARC of this book thanks to Net Galley and publisher Dover Publications in exchange for an honest review.

Horror anthologies can be so hit or miss for me. I tend to avoid collections published by one author unless I know their work because I have specific tastes for horror and I dislike the ambiguous short stories the genre often results in. I made an exception for The Shapes of Midnight and I am so glad I did!

This is a VERY short collection (~100 pages) of horror stories which are mostly basic in concept but are executed really well. The first two were my least favourite and the most straightforward of the bunch but it was all uphill from there. If you could plot my ratings of these on a graph, it would almost be a perfect bell curve because I felt the middle stories were definitely the strongest. My Kindle ARC was sadly missing two stories (Canavan’s Back Yard and Slime) which might also be why it felt so short to me.

No of stories: 10 (12 in actual collection)

Diary of a Werewolf-What it says on the tin. This was definitely one the weaker ones. It wasn't bad but it was very straightforward and there were no surprises or depth to it.

The Corpse of Charlie Rull-A man dies in a radioactive river and comes back to life. Slightly better than the one above because I couldn't tell where it was going and it was less of a standard plot. I also loved the way this opened, it had a fantastic style to it.

The Pavilion-A very creepy story about a man who murders his friend and returns to check if the body has been dislodged by the sea. This grabbed my attention and kept me excited to see what was going to happen next.

House of Memory-A different type of horror story to most and a refreshing addition to the collection. A woman is forced out of her childhood home and refuses to accept it has been demolished, much to the confusion of her family. Another very decent and enjoyable one.

The Willow Platform-A man in a small town finds an evil demon book. The writing style of this was very entertaining but I wasn't a fan of the story topic itself, which is probably just personal preference.

Who Was He?-A man in hospital keeps getting visits from a hospital barber. This was hands down my favourite of the whole bunch. I read it late at night and was genuinely very scared by it.

Disappearance-Another very strong story about a man whose brother has gone missing and the narrator suspects he killed him. The 'twist' of this was very easy to guess but it was still entertaining and possibly my second favourite.

The Horror at Chilton Castle-A man lives near a castle which has a secret sealed room, the contents of which are only shown to the heirs of Earls. This started off strong but the actual contents of the room turned it into not my type of horror story. It was still one of the best and definitely had some good horror moments.

The Impulse to Kill-A man who has the urge to kill devises a way to do so without being arrested for it. This is a neat enough idea for a story and it was well-written but it suffers from being very linear and not having a lot beyond the basic concept.

The House on Hazel Street-Upon entering a house, a man realises he has no memory of why he is there. The occupant of the house has a specific request of him. This story has one of the more unique concepts in the anthology and it was good but not one of my absolute favourites.

I debated between 3.5 and 4 stars for a while but I felt 4 stars was right since I enjoyed almost every story in here and the writing style was consistently strong throughout. At points Brennan has almost a Lemony Snicket-esque narration style and this was very enjoyable when it cropped up. This collection is very short in the form I received but that was minus two stories so I decided to not lower the rating due to that. Overall, this was a wonderful horror anthology and I would definitely want to read more by this author.

Overall Rating: 4/5 stars

The Shapes of Midnight is a horror collection by Joseph Payne Brennan originally released in 1980, to be re-released this year by Dover Publications. The Dover version collects ten of his best tales, which range from explorations of madness ("Diary of a Werewolf", "The Impulse to Kill"), to the shifting nature of time ("House of Memory", "The House on Hazel Street").

Easily readable in a single sitting, this collection is sufficiently disturbing, albeit leaning a bit towards prose and structure somewhat more geared to the younger horror reader. The influences are right up front as well for horror fans (the Lovecraftian nature of "The Willow Platform" and "The Horror at Chilton Castle", Poe style unreliable narrators in "Diary of a Werewolf" and "The Impulse to Kill", even an appearance of an Algernon Blackwood-esque Wendigo). Regardless, this is a fun way to spend a couple of hours and get a quick fix of horror.

As a postscript, it would appear the reprint leaves out two stories from the original collection, "Slime" and "Canavan's Back Yard", which are included in Dover's reprint of Nine Horrors and a Dream.

**I was given a copy of this book by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to Dover Publications.**

The Shapes of Midnight have some interesting and good stories. I would buy this book as a gift for friends.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC of this book book in exchange for an honest review. This was a good book of stories. I liked almost all of them. Definitely would purchase. Great collection.