Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories Edited By Ellen Datlow

• Release Date: 2019, August 20
• Genre: Horror, Short-Stories, Supernatural
• Author: A. C. Wise, Alice Hoffman, Aliette de Bodard, Alison Littlewood, Bracken Macleod, Brian Evenson, Carole Johnstone, Dale Bailey, Ellen Datlow, F. Marion Crawford, Ford Madox Ford, Garth Nix, Gemma Files, Indrapramit Das, Jeffrey Ford, John Langan, Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Thomas, M. L. Siemienowicz, M. Rickert, Nathan Ballingrud, Nick Mamatas, Pat Cadigan, Paul Tremblay, Richard Bowes, Richard Kadrey, Seanan McGuire, Siobhan Carroll, Stephen Graham Jones, Terry Dowling, Vincent J. Masterson
• Publisher: gallery, Saga Press

The essential collection of beloved ghost stories, compiled by the editor who helped define the genre—including stories from award-winning, bestselling authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, Seanan McGuire, and Paul Tremblay.

Everyone loves a good ghost story, especially Ellen Datlow—the most lauded editor in short works of supernatural suspense and dark fantasy. The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories is her definitive collection of ghost stories.

These twenty-nine stories, including all new works from New York Times bestselling authors Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, Seanan McGuire, and Paul Tremblay, span from the traditional to the eclectic, from the mainstream to the literary, from pure fantasy to the bizarrely supernatural. Whether you’re reading alone under the covers with a flashlight, or around a campfire with a circle of friends, there’s something here to please—and spook—everyone.

Contributors include: Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, Vincent J. Masterson, A.C. Wise, M. Rickert, Seanan McGuire, Lee Thomas, Alison Littlewood, M.L. Siemienowicz, Richard Kadrey, Indrapramit Das, Richard Bowes, Nick Mamatas, Terry Dowling, Aliette de Bodard, Carole Johnstone, Dale Bailey, Stephen Graham Jones, Bracken MacLeod, Garth Nix, Brian Evenson, Jeffrey Ford, Gemma Files, Paul Tremblay, Nathan Ballingrud, Pat Cadigan, John Langan.

Review:

My reviews will be posted one by one as I work my way through in November.

Jasper Dodd’s Handbook of Spirits and Manifestations
by Nathan Ballingrud

Opens with this:

“We live in a haunted world, Mama told him once. A wise boy will come to know the spirits, and distinguish the good from the wicked.
A dutiful son, Jasper sought to catalogue the spirits he knew in a handbook.”

Jasper, a ten year old boy with regrets and feelings of loss, sister passed, mother gone, drunk father present.
Spirits assembling in many ways in this young boy’s world falling apart and needing fixing, empathy felt for his dilemma with spirits, a tale that you won’t be forgetting.
A hauntingly poignant evocative tale bringing alive on the page psychological traits of youth with the hidden and the apparent, loss, regret, and undoings.