Ten Short Tales About Ghosts

I enjoyed this book. It really had a retro feel to it. It made me feel like I had been to an old book store and picked up an old book of gothic ghost tales. If you're looking for blood and gore, this is not the book you want. If you're looking for a good old fashioned shiver? Definitely try this one.

K.C. Parton's writing style was amazing, I felt as if I was sitting down by a fire enjoying a cup of tea while he told ghost stories. It was very intimate and I was enraptured from the start. My favorite stories were 'The Black Dog of Heysham Wood', 'The Last train' and 'The Heinkel' all of which I wished were a bit longer as I didn't want to stop reading them!

Ten Short Stories about Ghosts is a collection of ghost stories by K.C.Parton. Some of the stories are familiar while others are new and creative. I enjoyed them for the most part. "Uncle Tom's Ghost Story" tended to ramble, but on retrospect I can imagine an older uncle going on tangents while telling his story- or was he delaying the sharing?

I enjoyed the poem closing the book. I especially loved the irony that I was reading it as an ebook after being downloaded from the internet!

My favorite story has to be "The Last Train". I felt as if I was sitting on the train with Arthur as he moved from confusion to contentment. I do wonder when/if Arthur realized what has happened. I do like the twist ending, it was a nice wrap-up for the story.

I know readers fourth grade through early middle school that will like these stories. They are scary, but not too scary. They are suspenseful, but not too suspenseful. I give this book four stars. I will recommend Ten Short Stories about Ghosts to teachers of, and friends with, older readers.

This book was a brilliant, entertaining read. It is a wonderful collection of several short gothic style stories which had the perfect balance of mystery, intrigue and suspense. Parton has a lovely written style and each of his stories invoke the use of his great range of vocabulary and imagination. The characters in all of Parton's stories were well rounded and easy to empathise with. However, all of the protagonists in every story were male and this, for me, should have been varied as though it is nice to have protagonists who aren't the stereotypical scared wimpy female seen in countless horror fiction stories. Personally, I feel that if he had chosen to use perhaps a strong female protagonist in one of his stories to subvert the genre, this would have enhanced the the book and made it appeal even more for me.

My favourite of the ten stories was The Door as it had all the ingredients of a perfect horror story and it was executed perfectly. Reading some of the stories before going to bed probably wasn't a good idea, I was left with a sense of trepidation and uncertainty. It's definitely proved to me that it's a good idea to read horror stories during daytime rather than night time!

All in all, this is a lovely gripping collection of some great horror stories and some stories are left on gripping cliffhangers. Definitely worth a read!

If you love good old fashioned ghost stories, this is the book for you. Each of the ten short stories has its own personality, although all are set in England, many of the in the years around WWII. Some of the stories are creepier than others but anyone can read and enjoy them. It would be hard to pick just one as a favourite. None of the stories take more than an hour to read so it is the kind of book that you can dip in and out to savour when you do not have the time or inclination for a long read.
All the stories are well written, the characters are believable and likeable, and there are sufficient thrills and chills to satisfy. None of the stories are over the top or drenched in blood and gore. They are just good tales to read when you crave a little tingle down your spine. Enjoy!

I selected Ten Short Tales About Ghosts by K.C. Parton since this is a new book (it was published in June 2014) so I was hoping for some new stories that I hadn't read or heard before. I was pleasantly surprised that the specific stories in this collection were all new to me... some of the themes are re-used, but that's normal in ghost stories.

"The Last Train" - Story Two - this was a neat tale about passing into death. The train idea has been done before, but this was the best rendition of it that I have read.

"The Door" - Story Seven - this was the first story that actually gave me goosebumps. Maybe it's that I've been there, late at night working on projects alone in the dark, but I could feel myself there in the story.

"The Reader" - Story Eight - this one gave me the creeps and will make me think twice about going into old historic churches.

"Uncle Tom's Ghost Story" - Story Nine - this one was a fun and creepy story. I could see how being there would be horrifying, but I view this one as just a neat and different ghost story. I'm happy with something a little different even if if didn't scare me.

The rest of the stories weren't anything special to me. I suppose that out of a Ten Story collection, the fact that I enjoyed four of the ten stories is a pretty good percentage. I didn't dislike any of stories, there were just some that seemed a little more formulaic (such as: We have to have a ghost story about someone who died at work, or: We have to have a ghost story about WWII) and while I don't think that those stories added to the collection, I don't think they detracted for it. They were just more expected.

However, Story Eleven... yes, I said Story Eleven. In a book titled Ten Short Tales About Ghosts - I'm sorry, but I had to knock the author down a half star for the inability to count. I was leaning toward making this a 4 1/2 star review, but when I reached the Eleventh Chapter, expecting acknowledgements or links to other work the author had done, and actually started reading a story about the Devil in poem format... I just stopped. I hate to nitpick, but the title is TEN stories. Not ELEVEN. Not just "Short Tales About Ghosts" but specifically "Ten Short Tales About Ghosts." For some reason this is annoying me more than it should. But the only thing that I can go back to is "Quality is better than Quantity. If the author had only written Ten stories and put all of his/her effort into those ten stories, than perhaps this would have been a 5 Star review. But I found the poem to be a lackluster ending to a collection that shouldn't have even been added in the first place. However, that is my opinion, so you are free to make your own.

NOTE: I received this book from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.