When going through the new eBook releases this week, I ran into the anthology Midnight Symphony: 10 Novellas of Horror & Suspense edited by Robert Swartwood. I read through the contents of this huge book and immediately hit the buy button. It is an absolute steal at $0.99 (or £0.77 in the UK)!
This eBook is much longer than most books or novels, and it is filled to the rim with horror goodness! It is a collection of 10 novellas from some of the top indie names in the business. Kealan Patrick Burke, F. Paul Wilson, Tim Lebbon, Brian James Freeman... Oh heck, here, let me list the contents out for you real quick (with some quick comments by me):
"The Tent" by Kealan PatrickBurke (a creepy camping tale that is a must read for outdoorsmen…fun for the whole family…mmmwwwoooohaha!)
"The Painted Darkness" by Brian James Freeman (I've read this story at least three times over the last couple years… It is almost poetry.)
"Samson and Denial" by Robert Ford (I laughed a lot and loved this one)
"Do Unto Others" by J.F. Gonzalez (you will easily see why so many people are talking about his work)
"In Perpetuity" by Tim Lebbon (a must-read fan favorite)
"Waiting Out Winter" by Kelli Owen (an apocalyptic story that will make you look twice at flying insects)
"For Emmy" by Mary SanGiovanni (a great story that feels deeper than its supernatural surface…I'm sure a college literature course could have fun with it)
"The Diabolical Conspiracy" by Bryan Smith (a little different than Smith's usual fare, but worth it)
"The Man on the Bench" by Robert Swartwood (a stacking story of suspense and horror, very fun)
"Midnight Mass" by F. Paul Wilson (the original classic 1990 novella)
Plus an informative "About the Authors" section and copyright information.
Overall, this collection is a love song for the unsung hero known as the horror novella. Novellas are not quite a novel, but much longer than a short story. Some novellas can run up to almost 150 pages. This huge eBook book has TEN of them. The stories are short enough for you to finish curled up under a blanket on the couch on a chilly fall or winter night by the fire. Satisfying enough to fill your desire to read for hours, but not waste an entire weekend doing nothing but read... unless you want to do that by reading a bunch of these back-to-back.
Many of these novellas were originally available as expensive limited editions from some of the best small press publishers out there including: Cemetery Dance Publications, Subterranean Press, Thunderstorm Books, and others. Robert Swartwood had the awesome idea of collecting some of the best ones that many of us have enjoyed over the years, and he released them for dirt cheap in this collection. Seeing them all collected in this eBook for such a tiny price is incredible and un-pass-up-able.
Sadly, this collection is only available for a "limited time." I emailed a few people and I've been told this means possibly "December only" but another person thought that maybe January would be included too. A limited eBook, yikes. At least it won't leave our e-readers when it is no longer available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Ganxy. Some of the novellas are available by themselves – for the same price as this whole collection or even more – and some are not available at all right now. Making this an even better deal.
Don't miss this amazing collection of top-shelf horror fiction. At 99 cents, you can't go wrong.
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Midnight Symphony is available for:
Kindle (Amazon)
Nook (Barnes & Noble)
Or you can buy both mobi and epub formats direct from Robert Swartwood via Ganxy.
Robert Brouhard is a freelance writer and Assistant Editor. His poetry has appeared in Death in Common: Poems from Unlikely Victims edited by Rich Ristow, and he has additional poetry and short stories scheduled to appear in other anthologies in the future.