Horror Stories

Twenty-Six Scary Tales

By: Jack Kilborn, J. A. Konrath

Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews

Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's Summary

This collection features a menagerie of horror stories. Some are scary. Some are disturbing. Some are funny. Meet werewolves, vampires, zombies, psychopaths, aliens, cannibals, ghosts, and various things that go bump in the night.

Previously published in dozens of anthologies and magazines, some of these tales are mild, but some are extreme. Let the reader beware...

The stories include:

Finicky Eater - It's after a nuclear war, and a mother and her son are in a fallout shelter, the food long long...

The Screaming - Van Helsing and vampires, in 1960s England.

Mr. Pull Ups - A body modification tale taken to the extreme.

The Shed - Two burglars find the door to hell.

Them's Good Eats - Rednecks vs. aliens, on a spaceship ride of horrors.

First Time - A coming of age tale where all may not be what it seems.

Forgiveness - A dying serial killer asks for a priest to hear his last confession.

Redux - Ghost story noir, about a private eye and a deadly haunting.

The Bag - What's in the bag? You really don't want to know...

Careful, He Bites - Lycanthrope flash fiction.

Symbios - A sci-fi novella about man's first encounter with alien life, and how things can quickly turn bad.

A Matter of Taste - Zombie flash fiction.

Embrace - A bit of gothic horror.

Trailer Sucks - Some trailer park jerks kidnap a vampire.

Markey - Flash fiction, from a twisted point of view.

Punishment Room - A horrific suspense tale about a not-so-distant future.

The Confession - Terrible crimes, told entirely in dialog.

Basketcase - Hardboiled noir with a horrific twist.

The Agreement - A gambler pays the ultimate price to get out of a debt.

Well Balanced Meal - The worst restaurant you've ever been in.

S.A. - A werewolf novella about a Shapshifters Anonymous group that must battle Santa Claus.

Dear Diary - A very twisted pom pon girl reveals the secret of her inner strength.

Mr. Spaceman - We've come to mate with earth women.

Appalachian Lullaby - What do you do with a radioactive monkey?

©2010 Jack Kilborn, J.A. Konrath (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

IS A PIECE OF A@@, WORTH PRISON?, HELL YA!

WE DON ALLOW FOR SMUGGYNESS AT S.A. MEETINGS
Call me sophomoric, weird or just plain sick, but I loved these stories. If I had only one credit to spend, I would spend it on Konrath. These stories are laugh out loud, roll on the ground, pull over the car funny. I read lots of story collections and these were the most entertaining of any one collection, I have ever read. Konrath mixes comedy with grossness, S word, and horror. Konrath's stories get funnier the longer they go. S.A. is a good example. He takes what would be a weird werewolf story to start, but brings in Santa Claus, God and the Devil and keeps the ball rolling.

WHERE DID YOU LEARN TO SHOOT?
I TEACH HIGH SCHOOL
When Konrath decides to go gross, which is often, he is the best. If you have a weak stomach, don't attempt these stories. I have read Matt Shaw, Nick Cutter, Edward lee, Jack Ketchum, Anderson Purity, Steve Vernon, Scott Sigler, Timothy by Mark Tufo, Snowbound by Blake Crouch, Afraid and Endurance by Konrath and numerous Zombie books by numerous authors. Those were all good to great stories by great authors, but these stories as a whole are worse or better according to how you look at it. There are torture stories, people being skinned alive (aliens eating their scabs), people eating feces, people being eaten alive and so much more.

AIN'T NOTHING BUT A LITTLE PRICK ON A LITTLE PRICK
In one hilarious story, three rednecks capture a good looking female vampire with big knockers and they have her everyway possible. Just to warn you about one of the other taboos, that turn people off to some stories. That is just one example of several. I am trying not to say the S word so this is not held up in Review Pending Approval status for a week.

I can not say enough good things about the narrator, Andrew MacLeod. As much fun as the book would be to read, Andrew's performance has to make listening better by ten fold.

WHAT?????

OMG! Want my credit back! Jack, you are better than this! Although I did enjoy the Santa Clause/Shape-Shifter story.

All Over the Place

It's really hard to give a fair review to a collection of short stories. Some of them were riveting, some I couldn't wait for them to end. I should give titles for each but since they are on my iPod (an old one) the collection is just that, a collection.

The narrator is good, he does a reasonably good job of shifting tone between stories for the most part. The only one that was kind of annoying was about some drug addicted petty thieves who encountered a vampire in their search for things to steal. It was set in England and the accents were a little hard to understand

Going with that theme, petty thieves, one of the stories about two men trying to steal something from an old man and were rewarded with an ugly surprise was not one I liked simply because the surprise was 'telegraphed'..but then the author's prologue on several of the stories does admit to that.

All in all I don't know that I would buy it again. Reading this one would have been more to my liking because some of the stories are really short and that makes for a choppy audiobook.

What are u talking about!?

I dont know what these other reviews are saying.. This book was awesome! The stories were fun and very imaginative! The narrator did a great job bringing the characters to life, while the stories themselves were well written and not so elaborate on every detail, that u get bored! I highly recommend this book to horror fans! VERY FUN!!

The story telling is good, but...

Chapter 17. How awful. It truly taints the whole collection. The extreme horror was unexpected and unwelcome. Rape and torture triggers.

Summary fails

I'll tell you what the summary fails to....all these stories are about cannibalism in some way. Not scary...disgusting. I'm trying out authors I've never listened to before and this one I will never listen to again. I gave these stories 4 hours and they NEVER got better. This was the worst book I've ever purchased. No more Jack Kilborn for me.

Edgy and entertaining

What did you love best about Horror Stories?

You have to read/listen to Shapeshifters Anonymous. It was campy and silly and marvelous! I laughed out loud and I loved the ending. I'm going to go online and research the long lost 'Book of Bob'.

Any additional comments?

Jack Kilborn is to horror what Seth MacFarlane is to comedy. His writing is entertaining and he pushes the boundaries to the point of discomfort. Sometimes he crosses the line of decency. Sometimes I am disturbed by the subject matter. But I can't put it down. I HAVE to know how the story ends. He's just that good.

Great!

What made the experience of listening to Horror Stories the most enjoyable?

The stories are great!

What did you like best about this story?

I have never heard of Jack Kilborn before downloading this audiobook but I loved the stories and now I think I will be looking for more of his work to listen to!

What about MacLeod Andrews’s performance did you like?

Very clearn.

Who was the most memorable character of Horror Stories and why?

I like the Van Helsing tale!

Hit and Miss

This collection is really a hit and miss one. There are 26 stories: some, like symbiose, mr pull ups, and S.A. were amazing. Others, like The Shed, and The Bag were not so great. Those are my opinions, and I'm sure yours will differ in some way or another. The stories really aren't that frightening- many of them are rather humorous- but I did encounter a few genuinely frightening moments. I also encountered some parts that were rather disturbing. This is not a book that will give you nightmares, but it's still very good. As you can see, i gave it a 5 on all counts, largely because of the story symbiose, which amazed me -as I already said.I very much liked the narration- the rednecks were excellently done- as well as the variety of stories the book offered.

DISAPPOINTED

Waste of a credit. DISAPPOINTED, I liked all the other books I've read from this author.

Predictable but Entertaining

I downloaded this after listening to Endurance by the same author and I noticed many common themes running through these stories as well as Endurance. Amputation, limb loss and cannibalism feature in the majority of the stories so it starts to get very predictable after you've heard a few. And just like Endurance I found that none of these stories are actually scary but are more like black comedy, which is not a negative point, but isn't what I expected when I downloaded "Horror Stories".

What is strange about this audiobook is that the author writes little introductions to his stories which often give the main theme of the story away before it's even begun. For example there is one story where a character is revealed to be a vampire mid-way through, but the author has already told us it's a vampire story before it begun. Very bizarre!

Narration is very good and some of the stories are truly funny, especially the one about Santa Claus and the last story which was written with J A Konrath!

26 Tales of Terror

Excellent horror stories. All very original, although a lot of them are quite sick and twisted. The narration was also spot on.

Enjoyable blend of horror & comedy

A lot of horror likes to call itself "not for the faint hearted" but this really isn't, and the easily squeamish may want to give it a miss as well. A lot of it was also conciously written to be funny rather than serious horror, so if that sort of thing annoys you, again maybe pass. The humour is generally pretty crude, mostly too crude for me to find amusing, but that's just me, and I think the level of humour fits the stories well.

The stories themselves are by & large pretty good. They tend to deliver shocks rather than scares - I don't think I was ever scared, but was shocked constantly. For me it's the difference between something like The Grudge and a slasher flick like Friday the 13th - the gore in the latter is shocking, the more psychological nature of the former is scary, and the stories here all fall very squarely in the shocker category. They are all very original, very rarely predictable, which I prize highly in horror fiction. A lot of cannibalism though.

The narration - generally it's good solid stuff, with well defined character voices etc., but I find it hard to forgive the cockney accent in "The Screaming", which is a bit of a diction nightmare in any case - Konrath claims to have made a great effort to match the langauge for the setting, i.e. 1960s England, but I found it pretty horrendous. Don't get discouraged and stop listenening though, the rest is much better.

All in all, if you like your horror stories to be gory, brutal and nasty, you should enjoy these. If you like something less visceral, I really wouldn't risk it. If you do end up liking these, I'd recommend Haunted by Chuck Palanuik, which is as nasty but a good deal more intelligent, or The Collection, by Bentley Little.

Horror Stories

This was brilliant listen,some stories being better than others,some very gory,I loved it but then again i have enjoyed all Jack Kilborn books,it can be disturbing in some stories so not for the faint hearted !!!

A mixed up bag of horror and comedy.

Boy was I sad when I finished the stories off as I just loved the whole book. Admittedly I found one average but the rest were sheer magic. Yes some are dark and gory but I had some right belly laughs especially at the Santa Clause one.

All are original and okay most aren't for the faint hearted so best not read late at night.

The narration was spot on. Will read more from this author :)

truely amazing

tw: rape
I have honestly never been so physically disgusted by an author in my life, but this audio book - wow. its so amazingly written! the bag chapter made me stop everything I was doing and turn the light on, I was so terrified! there are a lot of vivid rape scenes so beware.

Poor

This collection of horror stories is disappointing. For example the story about a vampire in England has been poorly researched (quotes a price as 50p in 1960s

England when decimal currency did not arrive until 1970s) and the 'cor blimey'

accent of the American (trying to be British) reader is very irritating after a while.

There are much better collections out there.

horror stories

I've listened to lot's of short horror stories over four years and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book, if you're like me and enjoy short/anthologies of weird and horror I recommend this , this is the first time I've written a review.

AWESOME!!

Some very cool stories! I loved it and would recommend to any fans of horror!

Horror

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

was okay , better choices for free on youtube

Any additional comments?

some stores were boring and didn't keep track of what was going bored as i lost focus