Dark Black

Weller (The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury) delights with this debut collection of 20 weird and whimsical horror stories. “Little Spells” is an account of a writer’s descent into madness during a two-week-long stay at the home of the infamous Clutter murders, the subject of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Written in the style of music journalism, “Guided by Demons” chronicles the rise and fall of a punk group whose comeback album may have been written by the ghost of its lead singer. In the spectacularly unnerving “Böse” a doctor interviews a hospital nurse about a strange apparition she spotted within a patient’s IV blood bag. Ghosts stories get two radically different treatments in the poignant “The Shadows Behind the Trees,” about a long-lost child, and “Eleven Messages from the Beyond for the Producers of Ghost Investigators on A & E,” a comic send-up of ghost-hunter TV shows. Weller expertly balances overt scares with subtle introspection. The atmospheric detail and steadily maintained tension make this collection a page-turner. Agent: Judith Ehrlich, Judith Ehrlich Literary Management. (May)