A Dead Man's Shoes: and Other Strange Tales

by C.J. Wright

13 spooky short stories from the manic mind of horror author, C J Wright.

The 13 Stories:
A Dead Man's Shoes
Four Thieves
Grave Caretaker
Her Perfect Body
Honey Trap
Lay Me Down To Sleep
Love Bite
Match of the Dead
Naked Selfie
Roots of a Bloody Affair
Stage Hypnosis
Strange Station
The Trunk Under the Stairs

ebook

First published December 11, 2017

About the author

I have had a fascination with all sorts of horror fiction since childhood, and it has been the driving force of my desire to write. After meeting Sue Townsend, the author of the Adrian Mole books, at the age of eight, I longed to be a writer. I write horror novels for both adults and teenagers.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a 3.5 star read.

[Ankita Sahani · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book(metaphorically) on Amazon Kindle because it was free of cost and I like reading horror stories. It wasn't all scary, per se, but they were pretty intriguing and strange. It is a collection of 13 'strange tales' each one quite different from the other. Some of them I liked very much, some I wish they hadn't ended the way they did while some I wish hadn't ended so abruptly. All the stories were pretty short. My favourite story was "Lay me down to sleep". It was a sad but sweet story. It made my heart melt. What I didn't like about the book, however, is the way it is written. The entire text is littered with grammatical errors. Some sentences were agonizingly long and not phrased well. I wish the grammatical mistakes had been taken care of, so that they didn't take away from the reading experience. But, I'd still recommend it to everyone who likes to read short horror stories, because most of the story ideas here are new and not borrowed from clichéd horror tropes (at least I haven't read something like them elsewhere). But BEWARE there are horrible HORRIBLE typos in there which can be so off-putting.

Disclaimer: Some stories have M rated content.

My rating: 🌟2.8/5🌟

[David Farrell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this felt like work. The style of writing and the amount of repetitive and comma-filled sentences made the short stories longer than they needed to be. The focus was off at times, making the characters slowly learn something that the reader already knows. There were also chapters within the short stories, which I didn’t like.

One story introduced the concept of how recycling works, while another explained why someone might put their phone down on the passenger seat. That’s not all the stories were about, but these strange tales would frequently focus on the mundane details of the characters lives.

It feels like a rushed first draft in parts. Past and present tenses changed often. Characters were unlikable and many tales involved ghosts. There are frustrating tangents and much of the book felt like filler. Each story featured spelling mistakes or incorrect grammar, which was a shame.

That aside I appreciate the fact that the author had a go at some short stories (which I usually enjoy) and the price point of this collection was zero – so it’s hard to complain about value. He’s clearly still honing his craft and I hope to see more refined writing from him in the future.

[Anuradha · Rating 5 out of 5]

All the short stories in this book are unique & gripping. They are all well imagined, well written and not at all boring. I highly recommend this one !