An excellent collection of short horror stories – some will make your skin crawl, and some will haunt you – check out After Sundown, edited by Mark Morris.

The plot:

This anthology celebrates the horror genre with 20 original stories from some of the top names in the field. Chosen by esteemed horror editor, Mark Morris, 16 of the tales were commissioned and 4 selected from hundreds of stories sent during an open submission window.

Varying in theme and subject matter, you’ll find everything from dark mysticism to killer plants, with some terrifying revenants along the way. There are even some stories that are so strange they defy categorisation.

There are 5/6 stories which my mind will wander back to on occasion

I’ve listed the authors involved in this anthology at the bottom of the page – due to avoiding spoilers, I’m not going into any detail about the individual stories – just take my word for it, if you like horror, there will be something in here for you.

There are some stories in here which I didn’t find particularly memorable, nor scary, but I can see why they would get to other people – my main highlight about this read is that, with 20 stories of such variety, there’s bound to be something which gets under your skin.

A huge selling point for this book is the variability of the authors, and also, killer plants? TAKE MY MONEY. You know going in, with the introduction from Morris, that all the stories follow the same theme – horror- but this means different things to different people.

For example, there are stories that I actually enjoyed which weren’t overly scary (Alice’s Rebellion by John Langan), another which I thought was fantastic and my favourite, but not “I’m never going to sleep again” (Creeping Ivy by Laura Purcell). And then there were “look over your shoulder at every noise”, “I’m going to cry” and “what the f* have I just read, help me” stories.

I did think, at times, how could After Sundown possibly scare me, as there’s 20 stories split over 287 pages, meaning they’re on average, 14-15 pages each. Jokes on me; I read one before bed and I got scared. Had to have all the lights on in my home.

I do find that I often connect with stories which have a lot of description, over conversations. As they are short, with some you’ll get those detailed descriptions which, for me, allows me to imagine all the horrors. With others, you get more of a snappy, quick read, which may resonate with other readers, but didn’t allow me to imagine (which is when the real horror kicks in for me!)

I honestly couldn’t tell which were commissioned – of course, there are the big names which you may recognise, and author’s whose work I’d read before, but the writing in all were fantastic. They all varied, and on one hand, you might not have enough writing to judge by, but on the other, these authors have created brand new horror stories within so few pages – now that’s talent!

I often found myself either horrified from the first sentence, or realising that I hadn’t breathed for the last few paragraphs, or just plain weirded out (moreover by the ones I didn’t understand how they fell into ‘horror’).

You can pick this book up and put it down at the end of each chapter, only reading 15 pages at a time. There are 5/6 stories which my mind will wander back to on occasion, and overall, I’m pretty confident there will be something for everyone, leading this to be a 4-star read.

After Sundown, Edited by Mark Morris, RRP £9.95 (paperback); Book Depository

Pages: 295 (includes biographies)

Publisher: Flame Tree Press

Genre: Horror/Anthology

Contributors: Michael Bailey, Simon Bestwick, Ramsey Campbell, Rick Cross, Paul Finch, Elana Gomel, Grady Hendrix, John Langan, Tim Lebbon, Jonathan Robbins Leon, Alison Littlewood, Sarah Lotz, Thana Niveau, Laura Purcell, Robert Shearman, Angela Slatter, Michael Marshall Smith, C.J. Tudor, Stephen Volk, Catriona Ward.