The Winter Spirits is a fantastic collection of short stories from a variety of talented authors. Each tale features a supernatural element and quite often an unexpected twist. The characters are original and engaging with each story creating an authentic atmospheric experience. Highly recommended.

Fab collection of winter stories!
A wide variety and great selection for everybody. Especially if they are looking for a short story from their favourite author, they might discover somebody else’s style too!

If you're a fan of a ghostly tale over the festive period then this is the perfect book for you. It is packed with 12 tales of mysterious happening and ghostly apparitions as well as a visitation by Krampus which are set around the Christmas period. Some stories appealed to me more than others but overall it's a great book to dip in to if you want to spend a few hours being chilled to the bone. The stories are set in the past which lends itself to the eeriness and darkness at the heart of these stories. I would say that this is not a cozy read so be prepared to be spooked if you're of a nervous disposition. Thanks to Netgalley for an arc of this book.

Fantastically seasonal stories by some of the best authors around. Usually in a short story collection there'll be one or two that I don't enjoy but there are no duds here.

This is a great addition to this series of standalones. If you want something gentle spooky to settle in with over the winter nights, this is it.

I confess to not reading all of these short stories as one or two just did not appeal, however I got a good taste of the genre and enjoyed this compilation of short stories. They are very atmospheric and I really liked the book. This is not my usual reading choice but it was very enjoyable for a wintry evening. Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for an ARC of The Winter Spirits

Just brilliant, I loved this collection, perfect for the Winter season. Very well curated selection of short stories by top writers. I found I liked almost all of them, even the less favourites weren't at all poor, just up against stiff competition. Great to dip in and out of when you get the chance or to stay with a complete story if it really grabs you. I loved the historical theme. Pretty much perfect!

Thank you Little Brown Books and NetGalley.
Sorry for the delay in reviewing. I read over Christmas, New Year and early January - dipping in and out of this book.
This is a beautiful book with ghostly stories and it's nice to read different authors.
I will be buying this as a present for a friend next Christmas I liked it so much.
Thank you and I highly recommend this and it will make a delightful present.

Spooky Christmassy takes! An excellent stocking filler for literary friends who enjoy good writing and the comfort of a short story.

The Winter Spirits by lots of authors. This is collection of short stories by loads of very good authors like Bridget Collins and Jess Kidd. I love the idea of this and you can probably guess they all have Christmas vibes to them. I’ve seen a lot of people who are cross these stories have historical settings but get wrecked because history is the best. I think some of the stories were a bit too similar to others in the collection but all of them are enjoyable. The Salt Miracles by Natasha Pulley Was my favourite and I do hope they all keep coming out with short stories and I do hope they keep the history theme.

Really atmospheric christmassy, spooky stories. Excellent gift for the winter season. Really enjoyed this read.

Loved this! I had the first “type” of this book a few years ago and some of the stories really stuck with me. The same can be said for this one. I read this over Christmas and weeks later I’m still thinking about some of the stories. Such a good collection of excellent authors.

A strong selection of ghost stories – I thought this was better and more varied than “The Haunting Season” which came out a couple of years ago and featured many of the same authors. The best stories here are by Natasha Pulley, Andrew Michael Hurley, Laura Purcell, Bridget Collins and Catriona Ward, and most of the others are fun to read too, with only a couple of duds. A great collection for those new to horror and a perfect Christmas gift. I hope we see even more of these anthologies in future!

Much better than its predecessor, 2021’s The Haunting Season – if not entirely free of its flaws. This time, there are some new contributors and four more stories, but still no credited editor; this means the issues of the first book are somewhat repeated. Every story here has a historical setting, with most attempting to conjure up the atmosphere of a traditional Victorian ghost story. There is, again, a tendency towards clunky moralising which often makes it easy to guess where a story is going from the very start. But it seems the slightly more specific brief – the tales here focus on ‘Christmas or Advent’ rather than just ‘winter’ – has helped bring out a bit more originality.

At least the contributors seem to be having fun with it this time: Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s ‘Inferno’, Imogen Hermes Gowar’s ‘A Double Thread’ and Susan Stokes-Chapman’s ‘Widow’s Walk’ are all enjoyable, despite following similar lines. ‘The Gargoyle’ by Bridget Collins treads familiar ground too, but it’s beautifully crafted and pretty satisfying; I’d read it again. Stuart Turton’s ‘The Master of the House’ manages a surprisingly compelling fairytale-like narrative. In ‘Carol of the Bells and Chains’, Laura Purcell really commits to the theme by adding Krampus into the mix – of all the stories, this one feels the most like Christmas horror.

For me, three stories stood out, and in each case it’s their unpredictability that makes them notable. Andrew Michael Hurley impresses again with his Aickmanesque ‘The Old Play’: it plunges the reader straight into a disconcertingly off-kilter community in which the titular play, a sinister parable, must be performed every year. Catriona Ward’s ‘Jenkin’ is refreshingly weird, following a young woman who sees a strange half-human creature every time she tells a lie. Natasha Pulley’s ‘The Salt Miracles’ is as lovely as it is horrible, and feels the most complete, its effectiveness a product of the author’s gorgeous writing and knack for a heart-wrenching detail rather than any cheap thrills.

The Winter Spirits - Ghostly Tales for Frosty Nights

I read and loved The Haunting Season last year and so was excited to see that a new collection of creepy stories was coming out for this winter.
The Winter Spirits is the first book I bought with Christmas money and I dived straight in!
Another fantastic selection of short stories and some of my favourite authors returning, I snuggled up with the Christmas twinkly lights on, a hot chocolate and I immersed myself in the gothic tales.

My favourite stories were :
Host - Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Banished - Elizabeth Macneal
The Gargoyle - Bridget Collins
Widow’s Walk - Susan Stokes-Chapman
Carol of the Bells and Chains - Laura Purcell

Atmospheric and full of gothic chills, The Winter Spirits is the perfect read for these cold, dark and wet nights.

Do you enjoy creepy tales? I didn’t for years but love them now!
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An enjoyable change from the rom-com, hallmark Christmas reads. I really enjoyed the more gothic, spooky tales and enjoyed that they were shorter stories. Perfect for short sittings to read a quick story.

An excellent followup to the previous collection, taken in some fantastic new directions. It was a joy to do an event with three of the authors too!

It Took me a while to read this book but that is alright as it is that kind of book. I picked it up, read, put it down, came back and did the same without loosing my way. It is Christmas, it is magical, it is hauntingly wonderful.

A great short story collection that brings a different spin on Christmas and I enjoyed reading each short story and digesting it before I read the next one. A great book to curl up with.

Thank you NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK, Sphere for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

The Winter Spirits is a follow-up volume to The Haunting Season, and like its predecessor, it taps into the tradition of recounting ghostly tales at Christmas. I had enjoyed the earlier anthology without being too enthusiastic about it. The individual stories were good enough, but there was a general sense of “sameness”, with a particular emphasis on feminist Gothic which I like, in reasonable helpings.

As a collection, I think that The Winter Spirits is much better. For a start, while the original eight authors have been retained, (Bridget Collins, Natasha Pulley, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Elizabeth Macneal, Imogen Hermes Gowar, Jess Kidd, Laura Purcell and Andrew Michael Hurley), another four have been featured (Susan Stokes Chapman, Laura Shepherd-Robinson, Stuart Turton and Catriona Ward), allowing for a wider pick of talent. The subject-matter of the stories is thematically more unified, in the sense that each featured work has some association with Advent or Christmas. At times, the plot is directly inspired by the folklore of the season, as in the case of Laura Purcell’s “Carol of the Bells and Chains” which is a riff on the Krampus legend.

As in any such volume, some stories stand out for being different, original or simply closer to the reader’s taste. In my case, three were particularly memorable in this sense. Andrew Michael Hurley’s “The Old Play” transplants the typical folk horror trope of ritual violence from a rural setting into the theatre world. In “The Salt Miracles”, Natasha Pulley delivers a powerful tale of terrifying supernatural visitations set on a remote Scottish island. And Catriona Ward gives us “Jenkin”, which is just plain weird. That said, there are no duds here.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-winter-spirits-ghostly-tales-frosty-nights.html

I’m not usually a fan of short stories but this is a great collection by a really good selection of amazing authors.
Festive, gothic and a little bit creepy. Perfect for December reading.