Blair's Reviews > Dead Letters: Episodes of Epistolary Horror

Dead Letters is an anthology with a brilliant concept which just happens to be weighted towards subgenres I don’t much enjoy. If you prefer monster stories, cosmic horror, action/gore and dark fantasy over ghost stories and subtler shades of weird fiction, you might get more out of this book than I did. Which is to say I didn’t love it, but that’s not a value judgement, just a matter of taste. And of course there are some great stories here, especially ‘Re: The Hand (of god)’ by J.A.W. McCarthy, which uses emails and messages to tell the story of a woman who gets trapped at work... with a severed hand... that keeps getting bigger. How you even come up with an idea as original and strange as this story, I’ll never know. Also really liked ‘Something Cool Behind the Waterfall’ by Nat Reiher (similarly original), ‘Family Dirt’ by Justin Allec, ‘The Second Death’ by Christina Wilder, ‘Echo Chamber’ by Gemma Files and ‘Berkey Family Vacation 1988’ by Jacob Steven Mohr.