Nine Horrors and a Dream
Joseph Payne Brennan
paper $9.95
ebook $7.96

If you’ve hung around here long, you know I’m a fan of Joseph Payne Brennan. Someone out there has reprinted a collection of his that has been long out of print, Nine Horrors and a Dream.

Here’s some of what you’ll find in this short collection:

“Slime” concerns a creature from the depths of the sea that gets washed up into a swamp near a small town.  A very hungry creature…

“Levitation” tells the tale of a carnival show that goes horribly wrong for a heckler. This was my favorite in the book.  It’s clever, sharp, and short.

“The Calamander Chest” is something Edgar Allan Poe would have appreciated.

We learn that voodoo can be found in places other than Haiti in “Death in Peru”, although not always by that name.

Elevators don’t bother me, but now I understand why some people are afraid when they get “On the Elevator”.

Bet you thought parrots don’t live in New England, didn’t you? Normally you’d be right.  But if you see “The Green Parrot”, you might want to move to warmer climes.

“Canavan’s Backyard” is probably Brennan’s best-known short story.  If you live where witch trials were held in the colonial days, you might want to check into the history of any property you buy.

A dark bargain between a writer and a man is the subject of “I’m Murdering Mr. Massington”.

There are predators in the night, and Mr. Oricto encounters one in “The Hunt”.

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow can stop delivery of “The Mail for Juniper Hill.”

I enjoyed Nine Horrors and a Dream, although I thought some of the stories a little predictable in places.  That’s probably because they’ve been imitated, knowingly or not, by other writers since their initial publication.  Don’t let that stop you from enjoying them.  Brennan was solid craftsman and worth your time.