The Lamppost Huggers and Other Wretched Tales by Christopher Stanley




The man trying to make sense of his life now that his demon has been exorcised. The woman who knows her son has been taken, even as he sits by her side. The scorned professor who's found a missing work from The Planets Suite.

Christopher Stanley's debut flash fiction collection, The Lamppost Huggers and Other Wretched Tales, boasts an impressive assortment of characters trying to make sense of a world gone horribly wrong. The darkness here is home to vampires, werewolves, witches and ghosts--but it's the monsters you've never heard of that should worry you the most.


Over the years I've become familiar with Christopher Stanley's work, I really enjoyed his tale The Forest is Hungry from Demain Publishing and his Suds and Monsters piece from The Third Corona Book of Horror Stories, all of which I loved. Proving himself as a writer to be watched.

Christopher Stanley returns with The Lamppost Huggers, his debut collection of flash fiction featuring 26 tales of bite sized horror. To be honest flash fiction wasn't really something I had time for, but after reading Calvin Demmer's The Sea Was a Fair Master, my mind was changed. Flash fiction done right is amazing!


But flash fiction is something very hard to pull off, you have only a few words to pull in the reader, create at atmosphere of dread and terror before you swoop in for the kill. Time and time again with each tale The Lamppost Huggers achieves all these requirements for excellent flash fiction. 

Each tale featured in here is amazing. I didn't find one that was below par. What really shines out from this collection is the scope of Christopher Stanley's imagination and his ability to draw upon a huge variety of terror; dark magic, strange forces, witches, unexplained phenomenon, ghosts and the darkness inside us all. Christopher Stanley takes our ordinary lives and quickly turns it into the terrifying unknown.

When you have 26 tales of flash fiction all in one collection each one must stand out and earn it place if the collection is to work. When it comes to flash fiction, a lot can go wrong but when it goes right its pure perfection and The Lamppost Huggers is that.




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