Short Not Sweet

Short Not Sweet by Joe Bannerman is a sharp, darkly comic collection of seven stories from the author of It Follows, To Feed the Darkness, and The Healing Pool — and it may be his most audacious work yet. Bannerman writes with a swagger that is equal parts hardboiled and macabre, and these tales prove he is as comfortable with creature horror as he is with dry wit and genuine heartbreak. A bigoted country club member discovers, too late, that the custodial supervisor he's been tormenting is something far more terrifying than he ever imagined. A beleaguered warehouse worker on a remote Canadian overnight shift catalogs lost luggage — until one of the bags starts talking to him. A zombie couple's kitchen debate about the legitimacy of voodoo zombies sends the husband on an unexpected errand of unlikely heroism through the Louisiana bayou. A long-suffering husband runs magical errands for his witchy wife through the streets of New Orleans — until he reads one page too many of her spellbook. A group of wealthy men with a deeply strange hobby gather for their regular meeting, where old grievances and dark secrets finally reach their breaking point. A new emergency dispatcher sits down for her first shift and answers a call she never could have anticipated. And a carnival maintenance man, devoted to the beloved animatronic at the heart of a haunted dark ride, uses that devotion to settle a very personal score. Short Not Sweet is exactly what it promises — these stories don't overstay their welcome, but they leave a mark long after the last page.