The Thirteenth Day of Christmas

–>I received a free copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
A Christmas themed horror collection full of evil Santa Clauses, ghosts, and haunted dolls...

Even though a few things are repeated, Krampus is in there a lot, jealous husbands committing murder, lots and lots of creepy dolls, and being brought into an ‘other' world where snow and ice and other strange things happen, there is still a great variety of characters and plots and I found the whole collection enjoyable.

The stories range from bittersweet to just incredibly bleak and depressing, with a lot of gore thrown in for good measure. Plenty of naughty children are punished, as they should be. One funny story finds Santa, the rare actual nice and good guy one in this collection, delivering presents to a haunted house. The story is a rather upbeat one and ends happily, which made for a nice change of pace. My favorite was definitely In the Flesh Appearing... After a family moves into a new home they find their daughter's dolls begin to have parts go missing... An incredibly creepy story. Mostly though they are just well-done horror stories and the Christmas theme doesn't hurt them in any way if say you aren't reading them that time of year.

The author is quite good at the slow build of suspense, leading to an uncomfortable or terrible end. This is shown best in the title story, the novella The Thirteenth Day Of Christmas. After a mausoleum made entirely of snow appears in the town of Deer Park, other strange things start to happen. The power goes dead and phone calls are somehow made to people that begin with Christmas songs but end with odd threats of violence. Soon the town begins to be slowly torn apart... It's a great story to end a great collection.