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Never Fear - Christmas Terrors: He Sees You When You're Sleeping...
Twenty-Two Tales of Christmas Terror ranging from ancient Iceland to modern-day Iraq by New York Times Bestselling and award-winning authors, including: a new ghost story by Heather Graham, a Repairman Jack Christmas adventure by F. Paul Wilson, a spine tingling tale by master of horror Thomas F. Monteleone, and a special tale of Christmas wonder by Jon Land.
In a unique experience—a story within a story—you will follow along when the MacDonald family discovers an unidentified present under their Christmas tree. Who gave it to them? Where did it come from? No one seems to know. And when they open the mysterious gift, it sets them on a course to a Christmas of terror they could never have expected.
Authored by Heather Graham, F. Paul Wilson, Lance Taubold, Aidan Russell, Thomas F. Monteleone, Lisa Harris, E. McCarthy, Richard Devin, Lee Lawless, Kristi Ahlers, Don Bruns, Ed DeAngelis, Lisa Manetti, Elle J Rossi, Deborah Grahl, Liah Penn, Crystal Perkins, Greg Linden, Connie Corcoran Wilson, Jeff DePew, Mathew Kaufman
In a unique experience—a story within a story—you will follow along when the MacDonald family discovers an unidentified present under their Christmas tree. Who gave it to them? Where did it come from? No one seems to know. And when they open the mysterious gift, it sets them on a course to a Christmas of terror they could never have expected.
Authored by Heather Graham, F. Paul Wilson, Lance Taubold, Aidan Russell, Thomas F. Monteleone, Lisa Harris, E. McCarthy, Richard Devin, Lee Lawless, Kristi Ahlers, Don Bruns, Ed DeAngelis, Lisa Manetti, Elle J Rossi, Deborah Grahl, Liah Penn, Crystal Perkins, Greg Linden, Connie Corcoran Wilson, Jeff DePew, Mathew Kaufman
693 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 18, 2015
13 people are currently reading
437 people want to read
About the author
Heather Graham
583 books6,880 followersAlso published as Heather Graham Pozzessere and Shannon Drake.
New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Heather Graham majored in theater arts at the University of South Florida. After a stint of several years in dinner theater, back-up vocals, and bartending, she stayed home after the birth of her third child and began to write, working on short horror stories and romances. After some trial and error, she sold her first book, WHEN NEXT WE LOVE, in 1982 and since then, she has written over one hundred novels and novellas including category, romantic suspense, historical romance, vampire fiction, time travel, occult, and Christmas holiday fare. She wrote the launch books for the Dell's Ecstasy Supreme line, Silhouette's Shadows, and for Harlequin's mainstream fiction imprint, Mira Books.
Heather was a founding member of the Florida Romance Writers chapter of RWA and, since 1999, has hosted the Romantic Times Vampire Ball, with all revenues going directly to children's charity.
She is pleased to have been published in approximately twenty languages, and to have been honored with awards frorn Waldenbooks. B. Dalton, Georgia Romance Writers, Affaire de Coeur, Romantic Times, and more. She has had books selected for the Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild, and has been quoted, interviewed, or featured in such publications as The Nation, Redbook, People, and USA Today and appeared on many newscasts including local television and Entertainment Tonight.
Heather loves travel and anything have to do with the water, and is a certitified scuba diver. Married since high school graduation and the mother of five, her greatest love in life remains her family, but she also believes her career has been an incredible gift, and she is grateful every day to be doing something that she loves so very much for a living.
New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Heather Graham majored in theater arts at the University of South Florida. After a stint of several years in dinner theater, back-up vocals, and bartending, she stayed home after the birth of her third child and began to write, working on short horror stories and romances. After some trial and error, she sold her first book, WHEN NEXT WE LOVE, in 1982 and since then, she has written over one hundred novels and novellas including category, romantic suspense, historical romance, vampire fiction, time travel, occult, and Christmas holiday fare. She wrote the launch books for the Dell's Ecstasy Supreme line, Silhouette's Shadows, and for Harlequin's mainstream fiction imprint, Mira Books.
Heather was a founding member of the Florida Romance Writers chapter of RWA and, since 1999, has hosted the Romantic Times Vampire Ball, with all revenues going directly to children's charity.
She is pleased to have been published in approximately twenty languages, and to have been honored with awards frorn Waldenbooks. B. Dalton, Georgia Romance Writers, Affaire de Coeur, Romantic Times, and more. She has had books selected for the Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild, and has been quoted, interviewed, or featured in such publications as The Nation, Redbook, People, and USA Today and appeared on many newscasts including local television and Entertainment Tonight.
Heather loves travel and anything have to do with the water, and is a certitified scuba diver. Married since high school graduation and the mother of five, her greatest love in life remains her family, but she also believes her career has been an incredible gift, and she is grateful every day to be doing something that she loves so very much for a living.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 2, 2015
I'm a bit biased as I have a story within this anthology, but I'm sure everyone who is into unique new and established voices in horror will find quite a lot to like about this collection.
June 4, 2016
I am not usually a reader of short story collections but a friend recommended this collection so I gave it a go! I enjoyed the format of the stories or rather the "stories within a story". It's Christmas day and the MacDonald family settle in to read a gift of Christmas Terrors! Merry BLOODY Christmas!! The stories are varied in tone and depth of gore! If you love horror, the supernatural and you want to scare yourself silly, then this is the book for you! I am a fan of the supernatural over horror. I like more humor in my terrors and the story written by Jeff DePew, Secret Satan: A Christmas Tale, was my favorite! Smart, clever story about what it must be like to work in hell, for real! What do you get Satan for Christmas? What would be the best job in hell? I willingly threw myself into the Abyss!
December 31, 2018
Originally posted on the book blog Creature From the Book Lagoon.
" Twenty-Two Tales of Christmas Terror ranging from ancient Iceland to modern-day Iraq by New York Times Bestselling and award-winning authors, including: a new ghost story by Heather Graham, a Repairman Jack Christmas adventure by F. Paul Wilson, a spine tingling tale by master of horror Thomas F. Monteleone, and a special tale of Christmas wonder by Jon Land.
In a unique experience—a story within a story—you will follow along when the MacDonald family discovers an unidentified present under their Christmas tree. Who gave it to them? Where did it come from? No one seems to know. And when they open the mysterious gift, it sets them on a course to a Christmas of terror they could never have expected. "
Phew! This was a real beast to get through. At almost 500 pages, that is a little bit more then I like to read, especially when I’m trying to fit this in for the week of Christmas. I bought this book earlier in the year and I had been saving for a special treat this December. I hadn’t read anything put out by 13Thirty or these authors before, so I was really looking forward to jumping in to this. Plus, I love holiday horror, so I was pretty happy to get started!
This was an interesting anthology. You had 22 short stories, but then in between the short stories (as well as at the beginning and the end), there was another story called A Family Christmas Terror. This story told about a family that finds a book under the tree called Never Fear Christmas. Nobody knows who put it there or where it came from. So, for fun, they start reading the stories out loud to each other. After each story, you see the family start having problems… arguing, rowdy behavior, yelling, etc. As the stories go on, the behavior gets worse and worse until the heated finale. All totaled, this was a very short story, but the ending had an interesting little twist to it.
Most of the stories in the anthology were 4s and 5s. There were a few that were rated 1s or 2s and only 1 DNF (Did Not Finish). The low rated ones weren’t necessarily bad, but they just didn’t hold my interest or were not really my style. I know two of them were “real life ” horror, and I can’t stand that type of ” horror”. One of the low rated ones was a military war story that didn’t really seem to fit the anthology theme. Yes. It did happen at Christmas time… but come on, just a military war story in a horror anthology? No. And don’t give me that “Oh the horrors of war!! Man IS the monster!!!” stuff either… I’m sorry, but to me war stories do not go in the horror category. They go in the drama category (or comedy for those few that are out there). Or action category even. NOT. Horror. Sorry. No. The story that I did not finish was a story that was felt like maybe it was trying too hard to work in the song The 12 Days of Christmas. It seemed to drag a little and just didn’t ever get me hooked on what was going on.
I had two favorites. The first one was I’ll Be Dead for Christmas by Kristi Ahlers. It was a great little story about a haunted family lighthouse. The other story I really liked was A Time for Reflections by G. R. Linden. This was a fun little steampunkish Victorian story about a boy who has to go live with his uncle, who is in the process of trying to create a device to open a doorway into other dimensions… then something escapes when the doorway is left open. Both stories were really good and over way too soon. Both would have been a lot of fun as a full length novel! The story by Mr. Linden would be a pretty wicked series. 😀
The last thing I want to talk about is some of the problems with the book. They don’t have anything to do with the authors, necessarily, but more with the publisher. There were a LOT of typos. I mean… a LOT. And then sometimes just the wrong word or words were switched in place. It kinda felt like maybe they didn’t have an editor. I would suggest they invest in one… because, it felt pretty sloppy sometimes. D: Also, there was no copyright dates for the individual stories. I know, it doesn’t seem like a big deal… But some people like knowing if the stories were made for this specific anthology or if they are collected from other places and times. The publisher didn’t say at all. Another thing that was kind of annoying is that they didn’t give any info about the authors. Like, no pages at the back to give a brief blurb about the author or anything. That is one of the best parts about reading an anthology is when you find a story you like a lot, you flip over and read a little bit about the author and then you get an idea about if you want to look in to this author more. I don’t know. All of this just felt kind of…. not as professional, I guess? It wasn’t a HUGE thing, but with all of this piling up, it just got a little irksome.
Over all, it was a decent collection of stories. Most of them are pretty entertaining. A few that just were hard to really get in to. A unique idea about how the stories were inside an over all story. The biggest problems with the book were not the stories, but just with some of the slappiness from the publisher. It would have been a lot more enjoyable if 13Thirty tightened up a few editing problems and added a few things that were missing.
" Twenty-Two Tales of Christmas Terror ranging from ancient Iceland to modern-day Iraq by New York Times Bestselling and award-winning authors, including: a new ghost story by Heather Graham, a Repairman Jack Christmas adventure by F. Paul Wilson, a spine tingling tale by master of horror Thomas F. Monteleone, and a special tale of Christmas wonder by Jon Land.
In a unique experience—a story within a story—you will follow along when the MacDonald family discovers an unidentified present under their Christmas tree. Who gave it to them? Where did it come from? No one seems to know. And when they open the mysterious gift, it sets them on a course to a Christmas of terror they could never have expected. "
Phew! This was a real beast to get through. At almost 500 pages, that is a little bit more then I like to read, especially when I’m trying to fit this in for the week of Christmas. I bought this book earlier in the year and I had been saving for a special treat this December. I hadn’t read anything put out by 13Thirty or these authors before, so I was really looking forward to jumping in to this. Plus, I love holiday horror, so I was pretty happy to get started!
This was an interesting anthology. You had 22 short stories, but then in between the short stories (as well as at the beginning and the end), there was another story called A Family Christmas Terror. This story told about a family that finds a book under the tree called Never Fear Christmas. Nobody knows who put it there or where it came from. So, for fun, they start reading the stories out loud to each other. After each story, you see the family start having problems… arguing, rowdy behavior, yelling, etc. As the stories go on, the behavior gets worse and worse until the heated finale. All totaled, this was a very short story, but the ending had an interesting little twist to it.
Most of the stories in the anthology were 4s and 5s. There were a few that were rated 1s or 2s and only 1 DNF (Did Not Finish). The low rated ones weren’t necessarily bad, but they just didn’t hold my interest or were not really my style. I know two of them were “real life ” horror, and I can’t stand that type of ” horror”. One of the low rated ones was a military war story that didn’t really seem to fit the anthology theme. Yes. It did happen at Christmas time… but come on, just a military war story in a horror anthology? No. And don’t give me that “Oh the horrors of war!! Man IS the monster!!!” stuff either… I’m sorry, but to me war stories do not go in the horror category. They go in the drama category (or comedy for those few that are out there). Or action category even. NOT. Horror. Sorry. No. The story that I did not finish was a story that was felt like maybe it was trying too hard to work in the song The 12 Days of Christmas. It seemed to drag a little and just didn’t ever get me hooked on what was going on.
I had two favorites. The first one was I’ll Be Dead for Christmas by Kristi Ahlers. It was a great little story about a haunted family lighthouse. The other story I really liked was A Time for Reflections by G. R. Linden. This was a fun little steampunkish Victorian story about a boy who has to go live with his uncle, who is in the process of trying to create a device to open a doorway into other dimensions… then something escapes when the doorway is left open. Both stories were really good and over way too soon. Both would have been a lot of fun as a full length novel! The story by Mr. Linden would be a pretty wicked series. 😀
The last thing I want to talk about is some of the problems with the book. They don’t have anything to do with the authors, necessarily, but more with the publisher. There were a LOT of typos. I mean… a LOT. And then sometimes just the wrong word or words were switched in place. It kinda felt like maybe they didn’t have an editor. I would suggest they invest in one… because, it felt pretty sloppy sometimes. D: Also, there was no copyright dates for the individual stories. I know, it doesn’t seem like a big deal… But some people like knowing if the stories were made for this specific anthology or if they are collected from other places and times. The publisher didn’t say at all. Another thing that was kind of annoying is that they didn’t give any info about the authors. Like, no pages at the back to give a brief blurb about the author or anything. That is one of the best parts about reading an anthology is when you find a story you like a lot, you flip over and read a little bit about the author and then you get an idea about if you want to look in to this author more. I don’t know. All of this just felt kind of…. not as professional, I guess? It wasn’t a HUGE thing, but with all of this piling up, it just got a little irksome.
Over all, it was a decent collection of stories. Most of them are pretty entertaining. A few that just were hard to really get in to. A unique idea about how the stories were inside an over all story. The biggest problems with the book were not the stories, but just with some of the slappiness from the publisher. It would have been a lot more enjoyable if 13Thirty tightened up a few editing problems and added a few things that were missing.
January 9, 2017
Great book, I enjoyed it very much.
January 29, 2018
Scary and fun and Christmassy.
Pretty decent collection of stories, all of them quite original and unexpected. There's something from anyone, monsters, legends, psycho killers, very dark humor and lots of guts and blood and violence. Only a couple of stories were disappointing, one with very poor editing in which "her" and "his" pronouns kept changing uncontrollably making it too confused to read along with the simplest details of the story like the numbers of victims in a shooting that in one page were 18, next page were 11 and yet some pages forward there are 27. I know it's petite but it does break the suspension of disbelief and it infuriates the story went to print with no one, not even the author checked on those things; the other disappointment was the story that tries to hold the 22 stories together, it's madly repetitive, it's going nowhere and when it finally gets there you just can't believe how simplistic, not scary and no fun the resolution is. Other than those 2 stories the rest is very good and fun and creepy.
Pretty decent collection of stories, all of them quite original and unexpected. There's something from anyone, monsters, legends, psycho killers, very dark humor and lots of guts and blood and violence. Only a couple of stories were disappointing, one with very poor editing in which "her" and "his" pronouns kept changing uncontrollably making it too confused to read along with the simplest details of the story like the numbers of victims in a shooting that in one page were 18, next page were 11 and yet some pages forward there are 27. I know it's petite but it does break the suspension of disbelief and it infuriates the story went to print with no one, not even the author checked on those things; the other disappointment was the story that tries to hold the 22 stories together, it's madly repetitive, it's going nowhere and when it finally gets there you just can't believe how simplistic, not scary and no fun the resolution is. Other than those 2 stories the rest is very good and fun and creepy.
February 8, 2018
This one took me a while to get through. I started it before Xmas and just now finished up in February. Overall it was pretty much what you'd expect, a short story horror collection with all the stories having a Christmas theme. There was also a linking story that tied everything together, but he payoff wasn't quite what I expected.
Some of the stories were good, others were okay. Nothing was terrible but nothing was great either. Things did get a little dark and violent at times, which is fine but seemed somewhat forced. I did get to read my first Repairman Jack story from F. Paul Wilson which was pretty cool.
I think this collection would have been stronger if it had been a little shorter, but overall it was a decent read and you get pretty much just what the title says.
Some of the stories were good, others were okay. Nothing was terrible but nothing was great either. Things did get a little dark and violent at times, which is fine but seemed somewhat forced. I did get to read my first Repairman Jack story from F. Paul Wilson which was pretty cool.
I think this collection would have been stronger if it had been a little shorter, but overall it was a decent read and you get pretty much just what the title says.
May 29, 2017
Never Fear: Christmas Terrors is another brilliant anthology collection. Full of horror, terror, and darkness. Thrilling to read. The feel of goosebumps on my arm...the edgy scenes...it was all so real. The short stories were well-developed. Each piece gave a unique brand to the book overall. Once more, I was introduced to many new writers. I'm very familiar with Heather Graham's writing. I felt that this collection was spooky but entertaining. Don't read this collection at night...the fear may just take over....I highly recommend Never Fear: Christmas Terrors to readers wordwide. Fast-paced easy to read fiction.
January 1, 2016
Collection of short stories
A family spends Christmas together taking turns telling stories out of a book no one knows where it came from. While the stories are being read the family is slowly getting drunk. Anyway a few stories pop out as outstanding a boy goes to the mall as it's being robbed Santa gets killed. Another Santa takes vengeance on a man who stole Christmas from a bunch of kids with aids virus. Great book
A family spends Christmas together taking turns telling stories out of a book no one knows where it came from. While the stories are being read the family is slowly getting drunk. Anyway a few stories pop out as outstanding a boy goes to the mall as it's being robbed Santa gets killed. Another Santa takes vengeance on a man who stole Christmas from a bunch of kids with aids virus. Great book
December 21, 2015
Fun to read this loosely associated anthology of horror stories with a central Christmas theme. I have to disclose that I am one of the anthology's authors, but I loved the varying themes and styles of the different authors in the book. I also loved the central story thread that unites the book. Looking forward to more in this series.
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This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews