Synopsis:
About Dead Leaves
Two brothers find themselves drawn to the only house in the neighborhood not decorated for Halloween…
A man returns to his hometown to bury his overbearing mother, and finds more than memories awaiting him in the shadows of his childhood home…
A young girl walks a lonely country road, recalling a rhyme that brings with it memories of death…
A teenager hoping for romance gets more than he bargained for when the object of his desire introduces him to the object of hers…
An aging millionaire awakes buried in a cheap coffin with only a lamp and a bell for company…
The son of a woman accused of being a witch accepts the villagers’ peace offering at her funeral, but all is not quite as it seems…A woman with a violent past realizes that this year’s Halloween party may be coming for her…
And a lonely trick-or-treater awakes in a house rumored to be a place of death.
From Bram Stoker Award-winning author Kealan Patrick Burke comes the second in his series of seasonal collections. Featuring seven reprints, a brand new story “The Toll”, an introduction, and rounded out by the author’s recommended reading and viewing lists, DEAD LEAVES makes for the perfect autumnal read.
Edition:
Paperback
My Thoughts:
Ok, I know, it’s way the hell post-Halloween. I’m going to use the I’ve only been doing this for a year, so I’m still learning excuse. I’m new! I promise I’m going to start reading themed content BEFORE when I would want it to appear on my blog, so, you know I’m actually shilling Halloween reads BEFORE Halloween (because that would be more helpful, wouldn’t it?).
But that isn’t happening now, so just roll with it. Besides, I think that every day is Halloween if you want it bad enough.
But – to the important part –
The Stories:
Andromeda
A weird apocalypse and the power of cell phone addiction. I’m no longer if I’m worried about looking at my phone too much or if I should be doing even more of it.
Someone to Carve the Pumpkins
Two young boys find themselves drawn to one very spooky house. This one was super sad and I absolutely loved it.
Haven
A damaged man returns home to bury his late mother and finds that his traumatic past has been waiting patiently for this homecoming.
How the Night Receives Them
A young girl walks home alone at night contemplating the words of a man she knows as The Poet. This one is bittersweet.
Tonight the Moon is Ours
In rural Ireland, mysterious standing stones draw in a city boy and his two summer friends. This one is full of surprises.
The Toll
Millionaire textile magnate Miles Camden wakes to find himself interred in a cheap coffin with nothing but a lantern, a safety bell pull, and his own memories to keep him company. Figuring out how Miles ended up there right along with him is loads of fun.
Will You Tell Them I Died Quietly?
In order to finally bury the hatchet, a man accepts the offer of the local church to perform the burial of his mother even though they had long accused her of witchcraft. I loved everything about this story.
The Tradition
A lonely girl wakes up in an abandoned house and begins to piece together how she ended up there. Another solid story.
The One Night of the Year
Every Halloween a man gets three expected, but not altogether welcome visitors.
Overall Rating:
This was such a truly great collection of stories. KPB has a real knack for effective, concise storytelling. His pieces seem to tend toward a combo platter of tragic and spooky, which is one of my all time favorite combinations.
About the Author:
Hailed by Booklist as “one of the most clever and original talents in contemporary horror,” Kealan Patrick Burke was born and raised in Ireland and emigrated to the United States a few weeks before 9/11. Since then, he has written five novels, among them the popular southern gothic slasher Kin, and over two hundred short stories and novellas, including The House on Abigail Lane, which is currently in development as a TV series.
A five-time Bram Stoker Award-nominee, Burke won the award in 2005 for his coming-of-age novella The Turtle Boy, the first book in the acclaimed Timmy Quinn series.
As editor, he helmed the anthologies Night Visions 12, Taverns of the Dead, and Quietly Now, a tribute anthology to one of Burke’s influences, the late Charles L. Grant.
Most recently, he adapted his work to comic book format for three volumes of John Carpenter’s Tales for a Halloween Night series of anthologies and contributed a short story to Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden’s Hellboy: An Assortment of Horrors. He recently completed a new novel, Mr. Stitch.
Kealan is represented by Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House and Kassie Evashevski at Anonymous Content.
He lives in an unhaunted house in Ohio with a Scooby Doo lookalike rescue named Red.
(from the author’s website)
Dead Leaves By: Kealan Patrick Burke Self Published ISBN: 9781720274094 Published: September 18, 2018 Paperback, E-book 129 Pages Author's Website
