Thirty Miles South of Dry County

Kealan Patrick Burke is an Irish author who won a Bram Stoker Award for his 2005 novella "The Turtle Boy". Along with editing anthologies, writing comics and short-stories, Burke has authored five full-length novels. I discovered the author through his novella Thirty Miles South of Dry County. It was originally published by Dark Fuse in 2016. Now, it exists in a collection called Milestone: The Collected Stories Vol. 1. It's self-published in both ebook and paperback.

Burke invites you to a place called mining community called Milestone. It's a raindrop on a rural route that few have seen...willingly. You see, Milestone is a place you visit once a lifetime after certain circumstances - dire or otherwise - have occurred. With invisible walls that seem to surround it, I felt like the town was similar to the video game/film Silent Hill. It's shrouded in fog and has mysterious forces that seem to affect people in different ways. The dead and the living call the town home. 

When an elderly, dying man named Tanner finds his friends have disappeared, he makes the fifteen mile drive to Milestone. There are many reasons why he has avoided the town his entire life. Once he arrives, he sees horrific things, including a mysterious self-appointed town mayor. To Tanner's dismay, the town knows his secret. What is it?

 
With Thirty Miles South Of Dry County, Burke presents a vivid portrait of rural America, brush stroking with remarkable detail considering his Irish upbringing. Tanner is the embodiment of the aging small town Southern man. The town of Milestone is a macabre exhibit that's surrounded with a smooth Gothic curtain. There's mystery, suspense and menace packed into this scary short novel.  

This book also irrigates previous roots sewn in Burke's novel Currency Of Souls by utilizing some of the same characters and locale. The two works are independent and compliment each other in much the same way that master storyteller Stephen King frequents Derry and Castle Rock. It is this enhancement that should satisfy long time Burke fans while still enticing newer audiences.

October Screams - A Halloween Anthology

Kangas Kahn film company have released horror films like Fear of Clowns, Garden of Hedon, and Terrortory over the last 20 years. In 2015, the film company launched Kangas Kahn Publishing, a small publisher that have released titles like With Teeth and Halloween: The Greatest Holiday of All. This Halloween season, the company has published an impressive short-story collection called October Screams: A Halloween Anthology. It is 27 stories authored by some of Paperback Warrior's favorite horror writers. 

Here are some of my favorites from this collection:

Ronald Malfi's “Tate” is a holiday-themed story that centers on a grieving couple on Halloween. It begins with Nick leaving the house to buy some candy for the visiting trick-or-treaters that will surely be arriving. His wife Alice waits patiently for his quick return, but begins to worry when the minutes turn into hours. When Nick returns, he's upset and heads straight to his dead son's bedroom. Alice comforts him, but both are surprised when a boy arrives at their door that resembles their deceased son. As the story unfolds, readers learn more about the boy's death and the finale was a throwback to the old EC Comics horror tales of the mid-20th century. “Tate” was really effective.

In “Perfect Night for a Perfect Murder”, author Jeremy Bates uses the short-story format to present this first-person perspective on how to properly commit premeditated murder. The protagonist is a crime-fiction author that is detailing the advantages of planning the perfect murder to coincide with what he persists is the best day of the year for murder, Halloween. The story is a blend of dark humor and crime-fiction, and it ends with a little twist that I could see coming. Very enjoyable.  

“Masks” is written by Brian Keene and Richard Chizmar and involves some kids pulling a convenience store robbery on Halloween night. There's some social commentary about Covid masks (no doubt Keene's doing) as the kids don costumes to rob the place. As the robbery ensues, one of the kids is forced to shoot a female customer that's wearing a devil mask. When the kids make the getaway, they begin noticing that all of the streets are empty. There is an eerie silence. When the kids are beckoned to the home of a friend, they see more people wearing devil masks. While the story is a bit scrambled and seems incomplete, it nonetheless provided plenty of entertainment. 

I did enjoy man of the other stories, including Kealan Patrick Burke's haunting “afraid of the dark” tale “Let the Dark Do the Rest” as well as the clever, touching doll-perspective short, “Doll”, by Ryan Van Ells. Overall, this collection has some hits and misses, but is sure to please fans of horror stories. If you are a Bates, Keene, Chizmar, and Malfi fan, then these stories alone are worth the price of admission. Recommended.

Buy a copy of this book HERE.