The Shivers Collection: Five Otherworldly Short Stories to Scare You
The Shivers collection
Jackknife by Joe Hill
The Indigo Room by Stephen Graham Jones
The Blanks by Grady Hendrix
Night and Day in Misery by Catriona Ward
Letter Slot by Owen King
Amazon Originals (2025)
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| My actual copy I've had for years. This book scared me so much when I was about 10. |
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| Classic Nancy Drew! |
In recent years as I’ve rekindled my reading life, I’ve been drawn to new authors, like Joe Hill, Grady Hendrix, and a new-to-me but old school author Robert McCammon. Stephen Graham Jones (SGJ) is a horror phenom, and his books have been hit and miss for me–but I never give up on him, somehow.
When I saw the Shivers Collection from Amazon Originals, it appealed to me right away. Five short stories featuring work by well-established authors in the literary horror and suspense world sounded perfect. Amazon lists this collection under "Mystery, Thriller & Suspense" but I'd characterise them as absolutely leaning heavily towards horror. Familiar to me are Hill (see my reviews for The Fireman and N0S4A2), Hendrix and SGJ. I’ve never read a book by Catriona Ward, but I’ve been meaning to! And I’ve not read Owen King. And by the way, in case you don’t know, Joe Hill and Owen King are the progeny of my teenage favourite Stephen King. I still read Stephen King, and enjoy his writing, though not with the intensity of how I devoured his early works.
For many reasons, our family is not renewing our Amazon Prime membership, and Shivers is a part of the Amazon Originals collection, free to Prime members. After we’re no longer Prime people, I can still buy these stories, but I was motivated to read them by the end of the month, which is when our membership lapses. I’ve previously read and reviewed the Under the Mistletoe collection, a series of five holiday-themed romance short stories (see my summary on Instagram here), and I’ll tell you now: I liked the horror much more than the romance.
This post is not an endorsement of Amazon Originals by any means, but I was curious about the imprint. Here’s a post from Book Riot that beautifully explains how the Amazon Originals works. My one regret about leaving Prime is not having access to the free Amazon First Reads program (free books every month) and free Amazon Originals collections. The truth is, I’ll probably spend less than the membership cost on the books I choose to purchase and read anyway.
The five stories varied tremendously, and lean towards the psychological and supernatural horror sub-genre, rather than, say, body horror. Though there is some mild gruesomeness and blood, the stories are generally quite tame in that respect. There wasn’t one that I didn’t like, but I have my favourites.
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Jackknife by Joe Hill
“He had a shivery feeling, the sort of nasty chill that comes with the onset of a flu, or terror.”
A fun little story featuring Dennis Lange, a thirty-year-old prof who’s set his life on fire: after sexting with a student, his marriage is over and his tenure track career is dead. On his own in an Airbnb in the woods, he finds a knife buried to its hilt in a Sycamore tree, which he pulls out. I liked that the jackknife symbolised his own anger, an anger that he’s held all his life, but perhaps never realized: the bullies, his stepfather, his banal life. He wants an out, and he gets it, but the haunted tree isn’t going to let him get away with it. With a chance for gruesome redemption, this story satisfied.
The Indigo Room by Stephen Graham Jones
“There was definitely a wave of something rippling across the twelfth floor, which they all knew was actually the thirteenth floor.”
Perhaps there’s never a bad time for a paranormal office story. There’s something fascinating about the juxtaposition of the fluorescent, corporate workplace and the uncanny, mildly gory notes that Graham Jones weaves together that worked for me. In this story, Jennifer is sitting in another stultifyingly boring manager’s meeting when things go disturbingly sideways. Her young son is hanging out in her office too, upping the child-in-potential-danger ante. I liked that this story gave me the horror-novel feeling of not really wanting to read what was coming next, because it might be pretty awful. (Also, SGJ’s Afterword is almost as entertaining as the story.)
The Blanks by Grady Hendrix
“We’ll remember how you can lose so much at any moment–all it takes is a little bad luck, something as simple as an undertow, and you can lose it all.”
This has to be my favourite of the bunch! I’ve enjoyed Hendrix’s novels in the past, and this piece makes me realize that he’s a master of the short story as well. Rachel and her family of four (husband Steven, teenage daughter Zee and eleven-year-old Callum) take the ferry to their summer home on Jeckle Island and look forward to eight weeks of sun and sea with their annual summer friends. They all own cabins, and seek to give their kids a free-range experience in a wholesome, upper middle class kind of way. What I love about this story is how Hendrix drops little clues that all may not be okay, but the reader only realises it after something truly uncanny happens as Rachel and Callum walk to friends’ for dinner. The kicker is how Hendrix pulls off a powerful metaphor for death, ignorance, and complicity in just a few short pages, while keeping it page-turning. Shivers, indeed!
Night and Day in Misery by Catriona Ward
“The earth is littered with yellow and orange leaves, and it all smells of growth and death and growth.”
When I saw the Shivers Collection from Amazon Originals, it appealed to me right away. Five short stories featuring work by well-established authors in the literary horror and suspense world sounded perfect. Amazon lists this collection under "Mystery, Thriller & Suspense" but I'd characterise them as absolutely leaning heavily towards horror. Familiar to me are Hill (see my reviews for The Fireman and N0S4A2), Hendrix and SGJ. I’ve never read a book by Catriona Ward, but I’ve been meaning to! And I’ve not read Owen King. And by the way, in case you don’t know, Joe Hill and Owen King are the progeny of my teenage favourite Stephen King. I still read Stephen King, and enjoy his writing, though not with the intensity of how I devoured his early works.
For many reasons, our family is not renewing our Amazon Prime membership, and Shivers is a part of the Amazon Originals collection, free to Prime members. After we’re no longer Prime people, I can still buy these stories, but I was motivated to read them by the end of the month, which is when our membership lapses. I’ve previously read and reviewed the Under the Mistletoe collection, a series of five holiday-themed romance short stories (see my summary on Instagram here), and I’ll tell you now: I liked the horror much more than the romance.
This post is not an endorsement of Amazon Originals by any means, but I was curious about the imprint. Here’s a post from Book Riot that beautifully explains how the Amazon Originals works. My one regret about leaving Prime is not having access to the free Amazon First Reads program (free books every month) and free Amazon Originals collections. The truth is, I’ll probably spend less than the membership cost on the books I choose to purchase and read anyway.
The five stories varied tremendously, and lean towards the psychological and supernatural horror sub-genre, rather than, say, body horror. Though there is some mild gruesomeness and blood, the stories are generally quite tame in that respect. There wasn’t one that I didn’t like, but I have my favourites.
***
Jackknife by Joe Hill
“He had a shivery feeling, the sort of nasty chill that comes with the onset of a flu, or terror.”
A fun little story featuring Dennis Lange, a thirty-year-old prof who’s set his life on fire: after sexting with a student, his marriage is over and his tenure track career is dead. On his own in an Airbnb in the woods, he finds a knife buried to its hilt in a Sycamore tree, which he pulls out. I liked that the jackknife symbolised his own anger, an anger that he’s held all his life, but perhaps never realized: the bullies, his stepfather, his banal life. He wants an out, and he gets it, but the haunted tree isn’t going to let him get away with it. With a chance for gruesome redemption, this story satisfied.
The Indigo Room by Stephen Graham Jones
“There was definitely a wave of something rippling across the twelfth floor, which they all knew was actually the thirteenth floor.”
Perhaps there’s never a bad time for a paranormal office story. There’s something fascinating about the juxtaposition of the fluorescent, corporate workplace and the uncanny, mildly gory notes that Graham Jones weaves together that worked for me. In this story, Jennifer is sitting in another stultifyingly boring manager’s meeting when things go disturbingly sideways. Her young son is hanging out in her office too, upping the child-in-potential-danger ante. I liked that this story gave me the horror-novel feeling of not really wanting to read what was coming next, because it might be pretty awful. (Also, SGJ’s Afterword is almost as entertaining as the story.)
The Blanks by Grady Hendrix
“We’ll remember how you can lose so much at any moment–all it takes is a little bad luck, something as simple as an undertow, and you can lose it all.”
This has to be my favourite of the bunch! I’ve enjoyed Hendrix’s novels in the past, and this piece makes me realize that he’s a master of the short story as well. Rachel and her family of four (husband Steven, teenage daughter Zee and eleven-year-old Callum) take the ferry to their summer home on Jeckle Island and look forward to eight weeks of sun and sea with their annual summer friends. They all own cabins, and seek to give their kids a free-range experience in a wholesome, upper middle class kind of way. What I love about this story is how Hendrix drops little clues that all may not be okay, but the reader only realises it after something truly uncanny happens as Rachel and Callum walk to friends’ for dinner. The kicker is how Hendrix pulls off a powerful metaphor for death, ignorance, and complicity in just a few short pages, while keeping it page-turning. Shivers, indeed!
“The earth is littered with yellow and orange leaves, and it all smells of growth and death and growth.”
It’s been eight years since tragedy struck Stella’s small family, and she’s on a trip to revisit the horror of that night, hoping to regain something she’s lost. This story features a hotel that holds hallucinatory experiences and a window to the past that might shift Stella’s understanding of what truly happened to her husband and son. Ward manages to capture the depth of Stella’s grief in just a few pages, and I was particularly struck by her imagery in depicting Stella’s son–it was clever, and balanced the beautiful and the macabre. As a supernatural glimpse into a mother’s loss, the story succeeded.
Letter Slot by Owen King
“When he dreamed of the future, he didn’t fantasize about being wealthy or famous. He just thought how nice it would be not to worry.”
This story took a direction that I found to be somewhat unpredictable, and I liked that. It’s really a tale of teenage boy Blake and his mother, whom he loves very much. She suffered a fall and that was the beginning of their financial downfall, and her suffering; she’s in a lot of pain a lot of the time. A mysterious ramshackle house and a letter to nowhere lead Blake down a dark path. However, I found this narrative marginally less compelling than some of the others, and it remained more an interesting story than one that truly gave me the shivers.
***
So, five horror short stories that you may want to pick up if you enjoy the genre as much as I do. If you read them, feel free to drop a comment about your favourites of the collection.
Letter Slot by Owen King
“When he dreamed of the future, he didn’t fantasize about being wealthy or famous. He just thought how nice it would be not to worry.”
This story took a direction that I found to be somewhat unpredictable, and I liked that. It’s really a tale of teenage boy Blake and his mother, whom he loves very much. She suffered a fall and that was the beginning of their financial downfall, and her suffering; she’s in a lot of pain a lot of the time. A mysterious ramshackle house and a letter to nowhere lead Blake down a dark path. However, I found this narrative marginally less compelling than some of the others, and it remained more an interesting story than one that truly gave me the shivers.
***
So, five horror short stories that you may want to pick up if you enjoy the genre as much as I do. If you read them, feel free to drop a comment about your favourites of the collection.
We have pretty much the same book experience growing up (Nancy Drew, King, Straub). I also read VC Andrews, John Saul and others. I read many fairytales too, Bluebeard being a standout.
ReplyDeleteI love Catriona Ward, Grady Hendrix 's newer works and Joe Hill of course. I've given up on SGJ - I don't tend to gel with his writing style. I read an Owen King book which I really didn't like. I haven't read Sleeping Beauties yet, his collab with SK. I'm nervous about it, as reviews are mixed.
I'm also interested in Sleeping Beauties by Owen/Stephen King, and I've vowed many times to read Ward and just haven't gotten around to it. And VC Andrews...how I loved some of her books: the Flowers in the Attic series devastated me as a tween.
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