Night & Day

Night & Day, besides being edited by THE name in genre short story collection editing, Ellen Datlow, reads like a who’s who of horror - and it does not disappoint.

As the best ones do, these stories, besides making us feel something - fear, revulsion, sadness - also deal with deeper themes of the human condition, such as post-traumatic stress in Clay Chapman’s “Trash Night” or teach important life lessons, as in Nathan Ballingrud’s “Secret Night” - if you heard something in the Appalachian woods, no, you didn’t.

And that’s just in the Night half of the double feature.

I read several of the Day stories while on a plane heading to Dallas for a work function, so the shining sun stories were especially chilling.

Highlights for me were the creepy cult in “Hold Us in the Light” from A.C. Wise and the folk horror of Sophie White’s “Cold Iron”, but with heavy-hitting names like those in Night & Day, every story is a gem.

Thank you to NetGalley and Saga Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.