I would like to thank the author for a copy of this collection in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher - Mantle Lane Press

Published - Out Now

Price - £8.99 paperback £3.99 Kindle eBook

Scary Tales...

This collection of fantastic and haunting stories includes ghosts, horror, fantasy and contemporary fairy tales; told with ingenuity and wry humour.

Children climb a staircase in the woods and disappear.

A crow becomes a reluctant bride.  

A silent movie star is eaten away by the camera. 

A haunted inkwell reveals hidden desires. 

...Disturbing Dreams

The joy of short fiction is the way you can vary the tone from scaring you to making you sigh in comfort. Reading Matthew Pegg’s collection The Hungry Lens and Other Strange Tales it’s a collection that skills at unsettling a reader but contains such changes to keep you on your toes.

Among the stories I enjoyed were:-

The Well Wisher - a really impressive opening tale as a series of poison pen letters cause a small 19th century village torment. Our narrator Miss Andrews is a governess with hidden psychic talents and is asked by her employer to find the culprit. It’s very good at suddenly going quite dark in tone and yet also a fine mystery. Keeps you guessing all the way to the end as to what is going on and more importantly why.

Crow Girl - an old woman hatches a scheme involving a crow that can turn human and hopes she can keep her son stay at home. A very smart adult fairy tale with a bleak tone that steadily builds to a bloody ending.

Ghost Walk - very impressed with this tale. A couple on the edge of breaking up go on a ghost walk in York but it’s a sinister one. A tale that is eerie and also unexpectedly about forgiveness.

Crocodile Blues - an unusual twist on the cursed object tale and selling your souls for fame. I’ll let you discover how but impressed.

The Hungry Lens - this winding tale that goes through a life history explores Lon Chaney the man of a thousand faces and raised a supernatural cause of death as he submitted his body to so many transformations. Haunting and an exploration of the price of fame.

The Peacock House - This is a stunningly creepy tale as a man tells us about the disappearance of his young sister in the ruins of an infamous house. It’s powerfully disturbing and the reader finds things start to not quite add up. An excellent horror tale.

Andrew in The Maze - this is a powerful story exploring one life in multiple moments at the same time. It’s a reminder how much life can change from one year to another. It’s a beautiful story and delivered in a powerful way.

Wolfskin - I’ve reviewed this elsewhere but this take on fairy tales and wolves reminds us humans can often be the bigger monsters.

The Bouncing Policeman - our greedy narrator finds his music hall star neighbour isn’t giving him everything in her will. He kills her. The story then escalates as her past comes very quickly knocking the door. Skilfully surreal and disturbing horror.

Interview Day - a gruff man interviews a young prospective worker. The juxtaposition on this very normal interview and the actual setting you discover make this surreal comedy work very well!

Secrets - a boyfriend decides to find his girlfriend’s secrets and the toys upstairs contain bigger surprises. It’s dark and unsettling and refreshingly inventive.

This is an impressive collection of tales with the variety and tonal changes means the reader is never bored. Highly recommended for short fiction fans