Halloween Carnival, Volume 5

Starred review from October 2, 2017
In this nail-bitingly tense short horror anthology, each of the five stories packs its own particular punch. In Richard Chizmar’s “Devil’s Night,” a high school teacher encounters the scary side of his students. Norman Prentiss’s “The Halloween Bleed” reveals the tenacious power of dark magic. Lisa Tuttle’s “The Last Dare,” in which a woman relives the spooky tales about a tower house in her home town, plays with the unknown and the unexplainable. The protagonist in Kevin Quigley’s “Swing” cannot understand why the people he loves are driven to commit suicide in his presence. Rounding out the collection is Peter Straub’s ambitious “Pork Pie Hat,” in which a journalist’s interview with a prominent jazz musician takes a turn for the chilling. This miniature cavalcade of spine-tingling and thought-provoking horrors lives up to its name and is the perfect Halloween treat.