Number 26 = Unquiet waters - Thana Niveau

 The second story collection I've read by the oddly monikered Thana Niveau.

My only complaint about it is that there are only four stories so the whole thing was over in just over 100 pages.

Thana's stories are so smooth and easy to read but superbly creepy.  They read like the offspring of Ray Bradbury, Ramsey Campbell with a touch of Pat Highsmith thrown in for good measure.

This mini collection kicks off with To Drown the World. A man drives to see his sister after receiving a strange message. she lives on the other side of a causeway which he has always found nightmarish to drive across. He has a fear of the open sea.  His sister however has always loved it and felt like it's part of her.  That could never be a problem could it?

This is the longest story in the collection and packs a real emotional punch. The last few pages of this story are brilliantly effective. Eldritch horror doesn't come much better than this.

The second story is the Reflection. This is a super-creepy doppelganger story. It reads like something ray Bradbury would have written on a really mean spirited day when he just wanted to scare the bejeezus out of everyone.  I really thought this would be the best story in the collection

Then I read Rapture of the Deep. Two friends go SCUBA diving.  Strange things happen.  

I can't give any more of the story away than that.  However, the writing in this is superb.  You feel and experience the sense of dislocation that the characters feel. this is the literary equivalent of watching Gravity on IMAX 3D and feeling yourself alone in a great void. I can'r remember an atmosphere like this in anything I've read in years.  And she does it in under 20 pages.

To round the collection off we have Where The Water Comes In- a psychological horror delving as deeply into the central character's psyche as anything Highsmith managed in short fiction with some added Campbellian weirdness. This has a nasty twist at the end and was a more than satisfying closer to the collection.

I have both of Thana's novels on order. I hope her long work is as good as these colelctions have been.

Black Shuck Books seem to be a small press to look out for.  They seem to be concentrating on the absolute best of modern British horror writers.  There are 12 of these mini collections in the Black Shuck Shadows series featuring Gary McMahon, Simon Bestwick and other names I'm not so familiar with, but have heard good things about.  I will be investing in a few of them over the coming months.

I biought this from Waterstones but they can be bought direct from www.blackshuckbooks.co.uk/shadows