A little disappointed in this collection of short stories. Several started out promising, but the endings were too often nothing burgers.

What a marvellous ensemble of creepy stories this is! Stories of science fiction, horror, supernatural, weird stuff that will stay with you long after you finish them. If you like the Twilight Zone, then this will be right up your alley!

I want to thank NetGalley and Subterranean Press for the opportunity to read and review this book. Once again Sub Press has hit it out of the park with another excellent collection.

Some of these stories will be familiar to us short story and Twilight Zone fans. Others may be new and unknown. This is a fine collection of Beaumont’s work with a lovely forward. Some are spooky, some are eerie, but all the stories hit hard. Certain writers are timeless and Beaumont is one of them.

The name Charles Beaumont will be familiar to some, as a fairly prolific writer of short stories in the mid-twentieth century, and especially as a writer of almost two dozen Twilight Zone episodes.

The stories in this collection *feel* like Twilight Zone episodes. I had Rod Serling's voice narrating in my head as I read. These tales are often weird more than horrifying, although a good deal of psychological suspense and tension certainly makes them unsettling. Beaumont takes situations which are quite mundane but then injects some wacky little bit of un-reality into them, and that's the beauty of his stories. They *almost* seem like they could really happen. They are close enough to the lives we live to make the reader stop, with a sinking feeling in the gut, and ponder just how far off in the future these things might happen, or whether or not some of them could he happening all around us, and we're just too blind to see.

Beaumont isn't all anxiety and despair, though. He injects a good bit of snarky cynicism and outright outlandishness into his stories as well. He throws out impossible descriptions like they're no problem at all, and as a reader, you'll find yourself backing up to make sure you read the last sentence correctly. Then you shake your head and chuckle and keep reading.

There's a lot of great weirdness here. Though some of the stories focus on more sobering themes, many are just plain fun. The story that will probably be sticking with me for a good long while is "Mass for Mixed Voices", in which a man in an alternate/futuristic society finds solace from the idea of death in his garden.

I highly recommend this book to fans of The Twilight Zone, readers who love weird fiction, sci-fi/fantasy horror, a good psychological horror, and anyone who is already familiar with Beaumont and wants a gorgeous collector's edition.

This collectors sure to please with science fiction and thrill. An enjoyable introduction or revisit to Charles Beaumont.