Alphabet Soup

Horror Stories for the Tormented Soul

By: Tobias Wade

Narrated by: Paul Jenkins

Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

Thriller, horror, and suspense short stories by multiple award-winning authors

A is for Addiction....

B is for Barnacles....

C is for Clairvoyance....

Discover the rest of these original horror stories from around the world. Each author chose a letter of the alphabet and was given complete artistic freedom to make something horrible happen. Some stories will be mysterious, others creepy or even profound, but all are crafted to thrill and terrify you to the last word.

This is what happens when dozens of uncensored creative people are allowed to mine the depths of the human psyche for the most depraved, twisted, horrible things imaginable.

Excerpt: "What it really meant was she was rotting away in a cage of her own flesh. The weight of her own body had crushed the flesh on her backside so that it had stopped circulating blood, had started to die. It meant that, after only twenty-six days of freedom, I had to go home and take care of her again. I came back to a familiar smell of piss and sweat and mold; but that was all mixed with a new taint, the sour and yet sickeningly-sweet smell of rotting flesh. She wasn’t in her usual chair. Instead, I found her collapsed on a mattress in a bedroom she hadn’t used for as long as I could remember, the springs creaking under her weight. She was dressed in a simple blue shirt, almost like a hospital gown, and lifting up the bottom edge, my eyes came level to where she was rotting." - "N Is for Necrosis"

About Haunted House Publishing: We're passionate about publishing horror stories for adults, scary books for teens, and all sorts of dark fiction.

Full list of authors: Tobias Wade, David Maloney, Mr. Michael Squid, Ryan Cook, DoverHawk, Kyle Alexander, Grant Butler, Jack T. Anderson, M Higgins, Bak Hayong, Chris Thompson, Jacob Mandeville, J. Y., Marni Sue, Kaitlynn Cooney, Kelly Childress, Mikey Knutson, Noah Rex, John Buffalo, Harrison Prince, P. F. McGrail, H.G. Gravy.

©2018 Tobias Wade (P)2018 Tobias Wade

Alphabet Soup

This is an engaging collection of stories that will give you chills and make you think twice about many everyday things and happenings. Each story is connected to the others in its own way and we soon see so many evils in the world. Each letter gives you a different subject, yet they all intertwine and work well together. I enjoyed all the different subjects in these stories and how they connected. The stories are well written and give the listener much to think about. Narrator Paul Jenkins does a good job of bringing these stories to life and keeping the listener interested and engaged.

I received this audiobook at my request and I voluntarily wrote a review.

26 scary and creepy stories

Tobias Wade collects 26 somewhat intertwined horror stories, each based off their respective letters (M-Mirror, L-Lunar, etc). Some are creepier than others, but my favorite is probably C - Clairvoyance; which has a "seer" as our hero of the chapter. It is also the one that interacts the most with other chapters.

Paul Jenkins does a good job with voices, despite dealing with a roster of, I dunno, 50+ characters, none of which actually crossover between stories.

**I was provided with a promotional copy, at my request, and have voluntarily left a fair and honest review**

Interesting idea, theme adds cohesiveness

First of all: "This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review."

With that out of the way, let's talk about this book. The short stories in this book are all connected in a couple of ways. First of all, they are presented sequentially, with the title of each story starting with the next letter in the alphabet, A is for Addiction, B is for Barnacle, etc. They are also connected thematically, with many recurring elements throughout the stories, such as barnacles, doomsday cults, etc. I really liked the cohesiveness this lent to the work as a whole. While the writing style overall was excellent, I found that some of the stories just didn't hold my interest.

The narrator of this audiobook has a terrific voice for the genre of horror. His accent added an element of mystery to everything, and his voice was overall very pleasing. The emotional rawness of the tales was expressed nicely in his vocal tones, and he really helped to draw me in to those stories that grabbed me the most. Overall, a nice collection.

GOOD!

This book is full of many short stories so there's something for everyone. Some were more entertaining than others but that's with all compilation books! The narration was good and kept you entertained. I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Terrifying primer for adults

A great collection of short horror stories. A different one for each letter. So why a 4 and not a 5? The linking of them together and making some of the better stories appear to have been nothing more than mass mind control to make people think it happened. Again I am not a writer and I applaud anyone who can write and publish such things. As an avid reader the latter shorts were the parts that weakens the collection for me...the first 18 or so were great. I recommend it. Take them for what they appear and ignore the latter ones. I was voluntarily provided this free review copy audiobook by the author, narrator or publisher

Dang this was a fantastic collection

To just say these stories are really good or fantastic is putting it mildly. There are so many great stories here and one or two that I have heard before but are so good I would've been surprised if they weren't included. Echos was one I heard before but it's such a great chilling story. I wanted to binge through this collection but it took me a minute to get back to this series right off the gate after the barnacle story, man that was a great horror story that I cannot wait to make others listen in the car going to the beach. I was delightfully surprised with the quantity and quality of these stories and Paul Jenkins delivers as a narrator. I was provided this audiobook at no charge by the author, publisher and/or narrator in exchange for an unbiased review via Audiobook Boom.

Pretty good collection that tried to be more

This is a fairly good collection of supernatural and horror stories. As is the case with many collections like these, there are quite a few misses, but there are many more hits (and a few standouts).

The odd thing for this one, at least for me, is that it seemed the author(s) tried to turn all the stories into one cohesive piece. You'll notice it early on in story C (clairvoyance I think). References are made to other stories and while only one will make sense (since you're only 2.5 stories into the collection), it's clear that they are references. I found that cool, but things got REALLY confusing later on.

Many of the more mundane stories seemed to get swept up into this overarching plot of some sort of "initiative", and even that didn't make a heck of a lot of sense. Then later on I think we find out that even that group (which was using another group from earlier in the stories) is being used by yet another power. It got very X-Files and I don't mean that in a good way. I mean that in the "this is a random collection of stories that you're trying to make fit one ever-changing narrative that you seem to be making up as you go" kind of way. The fact that E is for Echo was in another collection previously further adds to my belief.

That said, there's some pretty enjoyable stuff here if you ignore all the rest of that mess. Take them as they are and ignore the world making. Paul Jenkins did an excellent job, and I'd definitely recommend this collection as the hits far outweigh the misses.

I was provided this audiobook free of charge in exchange for my honest review.

These are good and creepy.

They are not totally disjointed. They piece together to make a whole book.
This was creepy and scary and gross.
I liked it.

Great short horror story collection

I was given this free review copy audio book at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

This is a great collection of short horror stories. They are all different (which makes sense, since they're all written by different people) and well written. The narration is good too. All in all, if you like horror stories, and short story anthologies, you will probably like this one.

Surprisingly Good

A mostly excellent anthology of horror short stories with a wide array of topics and styles. Great entertainment with only a couple of clunkers. Overlook the cheesy cover art and buy this audiobook! Unbiased review written in exchange for a free copy.