for adults, but most of the stories are written at YA level. A couple are even geared more towards middle schoolers. However, the anthology contains a few stories, mostly towards the end, with mature subject matter and graphic descriptions of violence.

Twisted Tales (2025) is a short book, just over 200 pages. With 18 stories plus full-page biographies of each author, most of the tales are little more than flash fiction. They have no character development and often little time to build a suitably creepy atmosphere. However, the authors take advantage of readers’ previous knowledge of Halloween lore to supply what’s not in the written text. Also, like all good flash fiction, the best stories in the anthology often have a literal “killer” punchline.

My favorite story in Twisted Tales is “Spook Alley” by V. S. Lawrence. The titular boulevard here is an annual exhibition put on by the city, in which visitors walk through the alley and encounter the equivalent of a haunted-house amusement-park ride. However, the teenage narrator notices that every year, a child enters the alley and never comes out. She has avoided revisiting the alley until this year, when another little girl wanders in, and the narrator follows to keep the child out of trouble. This story is one of the few tales in the anthology that actually creates a suitably eerie atmosphere for what the narrator encounters at the end of the alley. “Spook Alley” is a creepy story, suitable for YA audiences, that goes far beyond a campfire tale.

Two good stories in the anthology rely on well-known real-life characters to supply much of the horror. In “Morgana Macabre’s Halloween Special” by Wendy Dalrymple, some teenage girls watch the annual Halloween TV special hosted by an Elvira imitator and featuring a cheesy vintage horror movie. The special graduates from reel horror to real horror when Morgana Macabre emerges from the TV set, followed by her gruesome stalker boyfriend. “Last Requests” by Louie Sullivan has a similar theme. Most of the story is a transcript of the annual Halloween radio call-in special, hosted by Dr. Creepy. The calls start out innocuously silly but eventually become far more macabre.

“Trick of the Treat” by Nidheesh Samant is the most adult story in the anthology, featuring some graphic gore. It also has one of the best endings. A serial killer with a machete likes to dispatch teenage couples on Halloween out for a secluded romantic rendezvous. This year, however, he goes after a younger child, with decidedly different results. In “Mrs. King’s Candy” by Hayden Robinson, a young boy gets a bag of special candy from a sweet little old lady. She tells him that the candy is just for him unless he chooses to share it. When he gets home, his abusive parents grab the candy and gulp it down without his permission. This is the type of story where readers know what’s going to happen next, but the fun is in reading just how it happens.

I also liked “We Don’t Go in the Howards’ House” by William Sterling. It’s a genuine haunted-house story with a double-twist ending. The titular house had been inhabited decades earlier by an elderly couple who were supposedly into occult practices. One Halloween night, the house burned down, and the couple both died. Now, a group of middle schoolers enters the burned-out remains of the house and swaps ghost stories, including a description of the house’s history. I appreciated the author’s ingenuity in providing a second twist at the end that surpassed the less entertaining initial jolt.

In a collection like Twisted Tales to Tell in the Night, the stories aren’t all winners. Some are juvenile and would probably entertain middle schoolers, but not older readers. I read one story, “Witch Apothecary” by Morgan Briceno, twice and couldn’t make sense of it either time. It’s about a girl who works in a novelty store and winds up transforming, I think, into a witch. “The Panthera Project” by Lawrence Vernon would probably have made a good novella, but was a big disappointment as a short story. It involves a secret government project to combine alien DNA with the DNA of common animals. The results are predictably bad with monsters on the loose until… That’s just it: readers don’t know what happens because the story abruptly ends as if the author had a word count limit.  

Twisted Tales to Tell in the Night has a couple of duds and some stories that were just too juvenile for me, but over half the tales in the anthology were entertaining, and “Spook Alley” was exceptional. Most of the stories offer some variation on the trick-or-treating ritual, but the editor gave contributors free rein in crafting the tales within the general Halloween theme. As a result, we have one story set in a corn maze and several others in the not-so-comforts of home. Overall, this isn’t the best horror anthology out there, but, like a good haul procured on Halloween night, there are enough treats to outweigh the tricks. I don’t want the editor playing a trick on me, so I’m recommending this book.

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.