I was referred to read Ugly Little Things, Collected Horrors, by Todd Keisling through Goodreads.com. I love that people think to send me book titles. The summary there didn't lead me to think it was going to be a huge read, but I was wrong. I really enjoyed this book.

Short stories are fun because they don't require a great deal of explanation. With Ugly Little Things, Keisling took advantage of that nugget, giving just enough fright to not gross you out or have you jumping at the paranormal. No, his writings left me in wonder. I literally sat in the middle of the night, at the end of one of the shorts, thinking of how the "true" ending would have ended.

The story mentioned above was my absolute favorite, though there were many that fascinated me. Without giving away the story, I loved Show Me Where The Waters Fill Your Grave. It tells of an elderly man who's lost the love of his life. He's waiting for her. Yes, waiting as in present tense. She's come back before; had it been his wife? There's a particular time she returns. Will it be her? Will she come back? Will she do what she did last time?

The story connected me to poor Jonathan, the widower. It was an emotional tale, which is probably why i loved it so much. It wasn't just about something scary, it was about a broken heart that had wanted to be reunited with its better part.

I'd awakened one night and decided to download the ebook. I was pleasantly surprised with what I read, from beginning to end. I think the stories are intelligently crafted, well-thought out and placed before the reader with a hint of realism to the fright. That there are monsters, even in the simplest and saddest of things.

Check out Todd Keisling's Ugly Little Things: Collected Horrors. It's pretty darned good! *http://bit.ly/UglyLittleThingsReview

Ugly Little Things, Collected Horrors
Todd Keisling
Crystal Lake Publishing, Sept. 15, 2017
287 pages
Horror, Short Stories, Anthologies ( )

Review copy

Earlier this year, I read Todd Keisling's novella, The Final Reconciliation. It's still one of my favorite reads from 2017. Ugly Little Things is Keisling's first collection and if you didn't get to read The Final Reconciliation, I've got good news on a couple of counts. Not only is his new book a chance to be introduced to his work through ten of his shorter pieces, but it also includes his critically acclaimed novella.

A Man In Your Garden - Ever see something out of the corner of your eye and then question whether it was really there? Take that premise, add a delightfully creepy twist and you have A Man In Your Garden. And one of my favorite lines in the entire book. "...you tell yourself it was your imagination, a phantom conjured from the tomb of sleep, given life by the bourbon soaking into your liver."

Show Me Where the Waters Fill Your Grave - A well-constructed and bittersweet tale of never-ending love with a healthy dose of horror.

Radio Free Nowhere - A road trip, a radio dead zone, the song of a siren...and oh, the horror.

The Otherland Express - A terrific story with a Twilight Zone vibe. "I'm a genuine Nobody. I help all the other Nobodies get from here to there, and sometimes I find Nobodies who don't realize they're Nobodies. Sometimes, I find people who want to become Nobodies just like the rest of us."

Saving Granny from the Devil - A totally enjoyable story about choices. One that shows the man in black in a new light.

The Darkness Between Dead Stars - A mission to Mars, a single volunteer, a familiar trope with a fresh look.

Human Resources - Lovecraftian mythos in the age of technology and one of the best opening lines I've read this year. "It is with deep regret and sorrow that I must bid you farewell. Effective immediately, I am resigning from my duties as HR manager on account of having just murdered my assistant and misleading others at the company."

House of Nettle and Thorn - A story with mutant plant girls. Whats not to like?

When Karen Met Her Mountain - Is it ironic that I'm reading a story about Karen meeting her mountain at the same time I met a mountain of my own? In a single week, I nearly had a kidney transplant, but the kidney was damaged and we had to pass, I fell down a flight of stairs, and was hospitalized with Congestive Heart Failure. The following week I began dialysis. As Karen Singleton's Daddy would say, "...sometimes things just happen and there's nothin' to be done about it...when there's a mountain in your way, you either climb other it, or you find a way around it. There ain't no in-between."

The Harbinger - Some people are afraid of clowns, for me, it's dolls. In this short, Keisling takes a familiar trope and delivers an effectively scary tale.

The Final Reconciliation - In this novella Todd Keisling introduces readers to the fictional heavy metal band The Yellow Kings. It's been years since that fateful show at a small L.A. nightclub. Miles Hargrove and his producer are interviewing Aidan Cross, looking for the true story of their one and only performance of The Final Reconciliation.

Todd Keisling is a wonderful story-teller. As I read the diverse tales in Ugly Little Things I found the only common thread to be the horror. It's there in every story, and I couldn't wait to see where the author would take me next.

Ugly Little Things is available from Crystal Lake Publishing If you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited you can read it at no additional charge. Also, if you are an Amazon Prime member you can read it for FREE using the Kindle Owners Lending Library.

Todd Keisling is the author of A Life Transparent, The Liminal Man (a 2013 Indie Book Award Finalist), and the critically-acclaimed novella, The Final Reconciliation. He lives somewhere in the wilds of Pennsylvania with his wife, son, and a trio of unruly cats. ( )

Ugly Little Things: Collected Horrors by Todd Keisling is a collection of stories that explore what happens when people are pushed to their limits.The first story called A Man In Your Garden sets up the anthology perfectly. It’s about a man who believes a stranger is standing on his lawn. The man is scared but is there, someone, really out there or does he have an overactive imagination. I love how this story shows that sometimes we are our worst enemy.

Another good story here is Saving Granny From The Devil, this is a coming of age story where a young kid name Todd gets help from the devil. Flash forward a few years and the devil is coming for Todd’s Granny and Todd makes a deal to save her. The problem is that while Todd’s heart is in the right place, he may have made the wrong decision. We then see how his actions affected his life and his Granny’s. What I like about this story is the idea presented that love lasts forever and maybe the devil isn’t such a bad guy. Todd Keisling shows that he has a gift for creating deep characters that you can’t help but care for even when they do wrong.

My favorite story in this collection is When Karen Met Her Mountain. Karen comes from a religious father who recently died and not too long ago she had a miscarriage that she hasn’t mentally recovered from. Tragedy strikes when a religious cult shows up and kidnaps her husband. The Cult is messing with the wrong woman and Karen is going to make them pay. I liked how you see Karen’s personality change as she hunts down her victims and then towards the end we find out that her therapist believed something like this would happen if the wrong trigger was pulled. The ending of this one really surprised me, this is a woman pushed to the edge and comes out stronger and more vicious.

The last story in the collection is a novella called The Final Reconciliation. It’s about a progressive rock band called The Yellow Kings, four kids with big dreams set out on their first tour. Little did they know that their first album would only be heard once and would cause the death of nearly 200 people. This story is a twist on an old mythology and a story of four kids achieving their dreams and worst nightmares at the same time.This is another coming of age story as the kids are working to leave the rough backgrounds that they come from.

Ugly Little Things is a book about the human spirit but the human spirit doesn’t always triumph. Even when you get what you want there is a dark side to it and that’s what Ugly Little Things is about. This is a book that’s shocking and disturbing but most of all it’s a look at what happens to people when they can’t handle the horror of life. ( )