Most of the stories in Johnny Compton’s Midnight Somewhere were published before in magazines, anthologies, or podcasts, and my guess is his story was one of the darkest, bleakest, and/or saddest of the lot because these were bleak.

Tell Me Yours, I’ll Tell You Mine by Kristina Ten feels like that weird girl you know from school or work or the pub (which is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black) sits down next to you and starts talking. Some of what she says is obviously unrealistic, but it all feels true, and it encourages you to share your own weird stories.

Unusual Occurrences by Glenn Rolfe is a collection of dark stories about aliens and ghosts and nature and monsters of all sorts. Though the topics are speculative or supernatural, the characters and themes like family, grief, and fear are relatable, the language was casual, like a friend - probably wearing a band tee - telling a story, and the collection was overall a fun read.

The House of Illusionists and Other Stories by Vanessa Fogg is a charming collection of speculative stories about love, connection, family, life, death, and more, with lyrical languages and ranging from fantasy to horror to magical realism to sci-fi to a beautiful folkloric tale within a tale.

“Stories are medicine,” says Cynthia Pelayo in her story, “We Women Speak of Wolves” from Howl, the new werewolf anthology edited by Lindy Ryan and Stephanie M. Wytovich, and reading these stories made me feel the truth in that.

Howl is a powerful collection by women authors with a thread of werewolves, but they’re really about power, strength, love, hate, bodies, sex, hunger, desire, loneliness, fear, rage, and the aspects of those that are inherent to womanhood.

Rebecca Cuthbert’s The Hauntings Back Home is a beautiful, haunting, sweet, sad, funny collection of stories that explore grief, death, and fear.

The novella and the short stories all seem to have a nod to folklore or urban legends but (mostly) from a slightly different angle than I’ve seen before, and overall some were more my taste than others.

Lotería by Cynthia Pelayo is an expanded edition of an earlier release, with 54 short stories that is very much like playing the lottery. They span genres and themes, time and locations; some are familiar bits of folklore with a twist, like La Llorona or the Loch Ness monster,  others are modern noir, others are ghost stories, etc.