Do You like book How Best To Avoid Dying: Stories (2014)?
The truth is, I hate giving less than 4 stars to any book. I know how much time and effort the writer had to put in just to get this thing published. At the same time though, some books just don't work for me. In this case, I think the writing is solid but the stories don't add up to emotion. I think each story has a smart premise but gets bogged down in cleverness. I think I'm starting to realize that absurdism (although I'm probably painting absurdism with too narrow a brush here) is just not my thing.
—Absolom J. Hagg
If you've a hankering for chilling short stories that will linger in unpleasant ways in your head long after you've put the book down, be at peace & look no further. Egerton can write a pretty nasty little tale. Most of these are no more than three or so pages long, so you're automatically primed to keep telling yourself "Just one more!" and staying up way too late, feeling more and more deeply unsettled as you read. I particularly enjoyed his twist on religion - the lengths that camp counselors would go to in order to gain converts to a Jesus with black teeth who isn't actually the answer, what life was like for Lazarus after he stopped being a miracle & was just a guy who couldn't die (John Connolly wrote an excellent Lazarus story for a zombie anthology that I read back in the day & I figured I'd never read any take on that poor dude that I liked more than Connolly's - but, yeah, this one is pretty sweet too). This is pretty lame, but here goes: I don't always read short stories, but when I do, I prefer them to be by Owen Egerton.
—Melissa