Autumn Harvest: A Celebration of Halloween and the Macabre… brings together all the fun things that may have scared you as a kid about Halloween while taking those stories a step further by adding a new dimension that will horrify and sicken you as an adult.
In this creepy and dark humored anthology consisting of a dozen or so short-fiction pieces and the Novella, “A Pumpkins’ Halloween” you will be catapulted back into the world you remember as a child where ghost, vampires, zombies, all kinds of boogeymen were real. You will also experience a new form of terror as an adult in reading these stories because many of the villains that these tales encompass could be easily pulled right out of the headlines.
Such stories in this book include:
The Express: Four friends go on a camping trip near the site of an old train wreck and get more than they’ve bargained for.
Damnedborough Radio 104.1 am: Rick addicted to collecting junk brings home a radio that broadcasts the voice of a demon.
Exit 34: A women recounts the experience of a time when she was young and on vacation with her family when they stopped off at a restaurant where you might end up on the menu.
A Halloween Story: A man at the end of his rope experiences a drunken Halloween.
Cold Mutton Soup: Mike and Jim discover resurrecting the dead may not be all that they thought it would be.
Glenn and Death: Loser in life, Glenn Oliver, finds himself accompanied by the grim reaper to a party in the afterlife that Glenn may not be ready for.
A Pumpkins’ Halloween: A novella which focuses on five jack-o-lanterns taking turns telling scary stories on Halloween as they watch passerby trick-or-treaters shuffle past them on their fun-filled evening.
And, many more stories... thirteen in all.
Professional Reviews
Lincoln Cole
Mark Kasniak has definitely hit another homerun with this work, which is a collection of short stories and a novella all themed around Halloween. They are full of surprises and twists and macabre dark humour which keeps it entertaining and thought provoking. Each story is well-written and self-contained, but they all contribute positively to the overall volume.
It is profane and has cursing, but not overly much, and it never really dips too far into the pool of grotesqueries. I enjoyed reading about Jack-O-Lanterns telling stories to each other about Halloween while trick-or-treaters went on their merry way, but I think my favorite story was about wondering what's in the food.
Everyone has had an experience where they are about to tuck into a meal and suddenly it occurs to them that what they are about to eat doesn't look entirely appetizing, or doesn't necessarily look how we might have expected. This can be worrisome for some, and this story really drives this fear home in a frightening way!
Creepy sums it all up pretty well, and if you're looking for a frightful way to spend a few nights, then this might be just what you're looking for! Highly Recommended!
Mehreen Ahmed
This book, Autumn Harvest by Mark Kasniak is a collection of fine short stories and a novella based on horror themes. But what's unique about these stories under the many facades of profanity, is the theme of deep relationships, the transience of life, a reminiscence of the past and an all-encompassing maturity. Such stories are bound in one ripe fullness of an "Autumn Harvest" with many folded meanings and subtlety. Thus Exit 34, is about reminiscence of a woman as her life progresses on a timeline. Glenn and Death reveal the horrors of the inevitable in the grips of deathly shadow. More or less, all stories recapitulate man's primordial fears of demons, horror and ghastly apparitions that have beaten the living daylights out of people for many centuries.
Tasked by his Goddess to find, relocate, and then quicken, the last three Heart Tree gem-seeds, Vanx the bard, and his motley crew of adventurers, set out to do just that.
