Disappointing. Recommend Wolfsbane and Mistletoe instead of this book.

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22 authors come together to write some humorous paranormal short stories. For me there weren't many laugh out loud moments, but some disturbing moments, maybe. Some of my favorites were:

THE BEST

KELLEY ARMSTRONG - THE UNGRATEFUL DEAD
This one inspired me to add a character to a book I am writing. I just enjoyed the liteness of it and the mixture of the paranormal.

JOE R. LANSDALE - MR. BEAR
Mr. Bear was one disturbing bear. I don't know if this is really one of the best, but I will never forget it. The beginning was hard to get into, but I kept reading ... and, you know, I don't know if I should have.

JEFF STRAND - THE BELL FROM HELL
This was one of the funniest things I have read in a while. It's about a guy who works in an office building and keeps a bell on his desk. He says if it is rung 666 times, the devil will appear.

JIM BUTCHER - DAY OFF
I had never read anything by Jim Butcher before, but I had seen some of the Dresden Files on TV. So most of the time I was picturing the actor who played Dresden, and I enjoyed it. Most of the reviews say this story was lacking the regular horror of the Dresden stories, but I didn't mind the lack of it.

LUCIEN SOULBAN - HELL IN A HANDBASKET
Also a little disturbing but humorous at the same time. I only remember bits and pieces. I think there was something about a baby sent down to Hell in a handbasket, and the demons were trying to figure out why it was there. The ending ends up being pretty funny.

NANCY KILPATRICK - BITCHES OF THE NIGHT
About a typecast vampire from Transylvania and his three bitches of the night.
A funny story; it won't have you rolling on the floor, but it was decent.


ONLY OKAY

CHARLAINE HARRIS - AN EVENING WITH AL GORE
WILL LUDWIGSEN - A GOOD PSYCHO IS HARD TO FIND
SHARYN MCCRUMB - DEAD HAND
STEVEN SAVILE - DEAR PRUDENCE



UNMEMORABLE

CHRISTOPHER WELCH - THE ELDRITCH PASTICHE
MATT VENNE - ELVIS PRESLEY AND THE BLOODSUCKER BLUES
MARK ONSPAUGH - OLD SCHOOL
J.A. KONRATH & F. PAUL WILSON - THE SOUND OF BLUNDER
D. L. SNELL - LOVE SEAT SOLITAIRE
DON D'AMMASSA - NO PROBLEM
JANET BERLINER - HIGH KICKS AND MISDEMEANOURS
ERIC JAMES STONE - PR PROBLEMS
SHERRILYN KENYON - WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD
MIKE RESNICK - A VERY SPECIAL GIRL
NANCY HOLDER - I KNOW WHO YOU ATE LAST SUMMER

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The beginning was awesome! The Ungrateful Dead sounded like an episode of Charmed and I want to look up Kelley Armstrong to see what else she has written.

Mr. Bear was stupidthe gist of it: Smokey the Bear cant handle celebrity life, so he becomes a serial killer and a bisexual serial rapist.

Hell in a Handbasket by Lucien Soulban made me laugh. Somission accomplished something in this book made me laugh! What made me laugh: One of the characters named Furfur made me think Disney rather than a minion of Hellwell wait until you find out what happens to him. What else: A quote from the Big J: I never had children. Yeah, right, one of the angels quipped before groaning. (Pg. 87)

I didnt know any of the characters or storyline from The Eldritch Pastiche from Beyond the Shadow of Horror, but enjoyed reading it because of writing like: This was like a rejection letter from reality itself. (Pg. 100) and I knew I could only write the same basic idea over and over, I would just go on and on and on- (Pg. 96)

With that last thought on the mindwriting the same basic idea over and overWell perhaps that sums up Elvis Presley and the Bloodsucker Blues, No Problem, Old School, and The Sound of Blunder. Well if Abe Lincoln can become a vampire hunter, why cant Elvis Presley? No Problem is the reincarnation of Frankenstein via a future relative instead of Victor himself and you guessed it he redoes his ancestors experiments and everything goes from bad to worse from there. Old School is the typical story from a Jr. High School kids creative writing class. A bunch of kids go to a cemetery to wake the dead and they actually do the end. The Sound of Blunderso overdone! At least the author mentioned seeing his storyline & plot on the Simpsons, but Ive also seen it on Family Guy, Futurama and various movies.

An Evening with Al Gore by Charlaine Harris was one of the reasons this book drew my attention. Unfortunately, it was predictable. To note: Im a Charlaine Harris fan, Ive read ALL the Sookie Stackhouse novels. The last book I read before picking up this one was actually Dead Ever After!

I have no words for Dear Prudence, A Good Psycho is Hard to Find and I Know Who You Ate Last Summer. Wellmaybe one: sick.

High Kicks and Misdemeanors, PR Problems and A Very Special Girl were other pieces that made me laugh.

Where Angels Fear to Tread by Sherrilyn Kenyon is an awesome title! The short story itself sounds like a good kicker for a series. Another author Ill be glad to look up and read more on.

Love Seat Solitaire was sad rather than scary or funsorry. 

Bitches of the Night was entertaining! Hmnncan we say, Big Love meets True Blood (perhaps a rated PG version of both rather.)

The BellFROM HELL was stupid. Actually if you want to look at it in terms of reality, it might be considered Delusions of Grandeur.

Dead Hand bored me, but it was penultimate, so I forged on.

Jim Butchers Day Off was entertaining too. Insofar, Ive only read Storm Front and if Id read more of the series before reading Day Off I might have gotten more of a kick from it. Nonetheless, it did put a smile on my face to think the fictional, Harry Dresdens one and only day off turned out not to be so bad.

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I'm a fan of paranormal books, and I like all of the authors on the cover - Kelley Armstrong, Charlaine Harris, Sherrilyn Kenyon, and Jim Butcher, so I got this. But I'm not a horror fan, and this turned out to be fairly uninteresting. It says it's humourous horror, but I didn't think very many of the stories were funny.

The big names:
Kelley Armstrong - Jaime Vargas from the Women of the Otherworld series is being pestered by a ghost.
Jim Butcher - Harry Dresden has a day off scheduled.
Charlaine Harris - Features environmentalists with a big idea for change. Not a Sookie story.
Sherrilyn Kenyon - A guy gets an unexpected inheritance. Does not appear to be related to any of her series.

The only ones I thought were actually funny were by Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris, Mike Resnick, and Eric James Stone.

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What a great collection of short stories! Very eclectic, and I loved every one of them. Super read, and so easy to put down for a day or two and then jump right back into. Highly recommend!

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Some of the stories are great, some are okay, and others I don't get. My faves were "Mr. Bear," "Hell in a Handbasket," and "Day Off." I love Charlaine's Southern Vamp series, but the story in the book didn't impress me much.

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Personally I thought this book was great. It was funny and disturbing...and I liked it!

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I thought this was an anthology of paranormal/vampire/science fiction because of the picture on the cover and the authors listed. After reading a couple of the stories, I went back and re-looked at the cover and back - and it's not. It's definitely a book of horror stories. "Mr. Bear" and "Dear Prudence" were the most disturbing in my opinion (which is kind of the point of a horror story). Most of the short stories in here by authors I've read before were a little darker and a lot bloodier than their usual ones (maybe because they are so short) and there were some authors that were new to me who had stories I liked enough to plan to try their novels. The conversations between characters were the best part of this book and good in all the stories. All of the conversations sound so witty and reasonable until the circumstances of who is talking and the violence are taken into account and then they are completely bizarre. The ones I liked best were "Elvis and the Bloodsucker Blues," which was funny, and I also liked the one called "Pr Problems;" and the Jim Butcher story "Day Off" which is a Harry Dresden story. I thought the Charlaine Harris story did not live up to a great title. This is a big anthology with a lot of stories.

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This book was awful! I only wanted it to read Where Angels Fear to Tread by Sherrilyn Kenyon, i started out reading the whole book, but the stories were so awful, i couldn't handle it. It bothers me not to give the whole book appreciation, but it was not good. I didn't even like Charlaine Harris's short story and I love her Sookie Stackhouse books.... Waste of time except for Kenyon's story which will surely lead into other books later.

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Very, very funny stories. One of my favorite anthologies ever.

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Book of horror/paranormal stories by bestselling authors. I bought this mainly for the story by F. Paul Wilson and J.A. Konrath (big fan of both). Although I was disappointed with their story "The Sound of Blunder" there were a few others I enjoyed. My favorite was "Mr. Bear" by Joe Lansdale, a new author for me. Mr. Bear managed to be twisted but funny at the same time with its premise--Smokey Bear as a crazed but needy serial killer. I don't read the paranormal vampire/shapeshifter fiction but there were several stories by major authors that looked good.

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