Back Roads Literary Review Autumn 2025 - Paperback

by Michael D. Van Natta (Editor in Chief)

In this short story collection of twenty-one macabre tales by emerging authors, you'll meet ghosts, spirits, and spooky things that creep in the night. Murder, insanity, and dark mystery will seep into your soul and haunt your waking thoughts. Remote villages, derelict mansions, cemeteries, and claustrophobic settings will offer no escape.

Beware of the Inanimate objects that bring a twisted fate.

Greed, racism and insanity beset an 1880s miner.

An argumentative husband with a discontented wife is faced with a nightmare he can't escape.

A recluse with memory issues is haunted by a shapeshifter.

Lost tourist stumbles upon a desolate town with a terrifying secret.

A woman inherits a mansion from a relative accused of being a witch.

Leading what seems to be a normal life, a serial killer tinkers with a hideous collection in his man cave.

In an old cemetery, a woman discovers her name on a tombstone.

Depression-era tale of horror far beyond the unyielding threat of nature's fury.

Set in New Orleans, ghosts seek the magic spells of a charming clockmaker to get one day for a life moment to do over.