Lora Hates Spam

by Joseph Payne Brennan

This is a collection of short stories that was originally published in 1980, but re-released and I hadn't seen it before or heard of the author. There was some fairly gruesome Horror, but presented with unusual perspectives and very well-written.

The first story, Diary of a Werewolf, definitely grabbed my attention and made me wonder what else lay in store through the collection. This was followed by an original take on a zombie theme, clueing me in that we were going to cover several sub-genres of Horror before we were done.

The stories are generally of a high calibre and cover a variety of supernatural entities as well as the odd murder story, always with a creep factor. It's hard to choose a stand-out in a collection all written by the same author, but The Willow Platform stuck in my mind and Horror at Chiltern Castle was a truly horrific tale in the Gothic vein. I liked the final story too, which was a time slip called The House on Hazel Street.

Overall a very good collection.