Empty Graves: Tales of the Living Dead

by Jonathan Maberry, Ken Foree (Introduction)

From the New York Times–bestselling author of V-Wars, sixteen horror stories “written with great verve . . . for die hard zombie fans” (Publishers Weekly).

Bram Stoker Award winner Jonathan Maberry is a master of the zombie tale. Empty Tales of the Living Dead is emotionally charged and disturbing. These stories range across the genres of horror, science fiction, and biological thriller without ever straying from the fascinating humanity at the core.

Together in a single action-packed collection, these sixteen gritty tales of the living dead span Maberr’s career, including an exclusive never-before-published short story.

Genres: Horror, Zombies, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Collections

392 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2021

About the author

JONATHAN MABERRY is a NYTimes bestselling author, #1 Audible bestseller, 5-time Bram Stoker Award-winner, 4-time Scribe Award winner, Inkpot Award winner, comic book writer, and producer. He is the author of more than 50 novels, 190 short stories, 16 short story collections, 30 graphic novels, 14 nonfiction books, and has edited 26 anthologies. His vampire apocalypse book series, V-WARS, was a Netflix original series starring Ian Somerhalder. His 2009-10 run as writer on the Black Panther comic formed a large chunk of the recent blockbuster film, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. His bestselling YA zombie series, Rot & Ruin is in development for film at Alcon Entertainment; and John Wick director, Chad Stahelski, is developing Jonathan’s Joe Ledger Thrillers for TV. Jonathan writes in multiple genres including suspense, thriller, horror, science fiction, epic fantasy, and action; and he writes for adults, teens and middle grade. His works include The Pine Deep Trilogy, The Kagen the Damned Trilogy, NecroTek, Ink, Glimpse, the Rot & Ruin series, the Dead of Night series, The Wolfman, X-Files Origins: Devil’s Advocate, The Sleepers War (with Weston Ochse), Mars One, and many others. He is the editor of high-profile anthologies including Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird, The X-Files, Aliens: Bug Hunt, Out of Tune, Don’t Turn out the Lights: A Tribute to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Baker Street Irregulars, Nights of the Living Dead, Shadows & Verse, and others. His comics include Marvel Zombies Return, The Punisher: Naked Kills, Wolverine: Ghosts, Godzilla vs Cthulhu: Death May Die, Bad Blood and many others. Jonathan has written in many popular licensed worlds, including Hellboy, True Blood, The Wolfman, John Carter of Mars, Sherlock Holmes, C.H.U.D., Diablo IV, Deadlands, World of Warcraft, Planet of the Apes, Aliens, Predator, Karl Kolchak, and many others. He the president of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, and the editor of Weird Tales Magazine. He lives in San Diego, California. Find him online at www.jonathanmaberry.com

Reviews

[Stitching Ghost · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't vibe with Maberry's writing style, there were things that I normally really enjoy in there, but they fell flat.

There really isn't a single story that stood out to me and that I would call a favorite even for the purpose of this review. That's even though there were themes that I liked and would want to see more in Zompoc fiction.

In Fat Girl With a Knife we spent so much time establishing that the girl was indeed fat, ugly and bullied that by the time anything actually happened I was already tired.

There's a story about a kid who's already near death by the time the zombie apocalypse comes around, another one that should have been right up my alley that ended up so flattened that I just didn't really care.

On top of that there were stories that should have been or were extras to Maberry's Rot & Ruin series, I might have been excited to get extra material if I had been into that series but I'm not so I really wasn't thrilled.

Neutral 2.5 rounded up.

[Vickie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of mostly zombie stories!

[WendyB · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good scares to be had here but it also helps to have read Maberry's various zombie books... and if you haven't, get on it. They're good!
The story "Calling Death" was my fav. Very creepy.

[Michael Kocinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great collection of zombie short stories by a real masterful storyteller. What I most likely about Maberry are his believable characters—there’s always a lot of humanity in his stories, and that makes the horror elements even more horrific. I enjoyed some of the call backs to his novels in these stories, but you don’t need to have read them to enjoy this anthology. My favorite stories were Not this War, Not this World, and Pegleg and Paddy save the world. Pegleg in particular us really funny and I’d love to see it adapted as a film. It’d be fantastic.

[Stephanie Griffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here are my ratings for the individual short stories, based on a 1-10 scale:
Chokepoint: 7 Sad
Fat Girl With A Knife: 7 A misfit teenage girl quietly deals with life.
Lone Gunman: 7 A military man finds hope in a warehouse.
Not This War, Not This World: 7 Same military man has more adventure.
Calling Death: 5 Ok story about a mining disaster.
Gavin Funke’s Monster Movie Marathon: 9 Excellent story of a man coming to terms with his extended family turning into zombies.
Cadaver Dog: 5 Disappointing story that cut off too soon. I’d really like this if it had continued.
Overdue Books: 4 Another too-short story about the power of books
A Small Taste Of The Old Country: 9 A baker offers to make a special dinner, using old family recipes, for two men in Argentina.
Sisters: 7 Two young girls fight to survive in a camp run by men.
Jack and Jill: 10 A young victim of cancer watches his small world fall apart.
The Wind Through the Fence: 7 REALLY depressing story of men building a fence to keep the zombies out.
Jingo and The Hammerman: 7 Two men discuss Tony Robbie’s’ philosophy while chopping down zombies.
The Death Poem of Sensei Otoro: 8 I thought I wouldn’t like this story, as it started out slow, but I raced through the final pages!
Son of The Devil: 5 Eye-rolling beginning and didn’t get much better.
Pegleg and Paddy Save The World: 9 Funny as heck! The true(?) story of the Chicago fire.

[Julia Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wasn't a disapointing story in the book. I LOVED this collection.

[Blake Wickham · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very solid collection of short stories. I was not familiar with Jonathan Maberry before reading this but I think it was a good introduction.

While the way Maberry's zombies behave is not anything new, the way he explores the characters makes for effective, entertaining stories. It's all the more impressive that he does it with limited space.

My favorite stories were Jack and Jill, Jingo and the Hammerman, and Pegleg and Paddy Save the World.

[Badseedgirl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many of these short stories are ones I have read before but having them all collected together was great. I don't think I have ever read anything by Jonathan Maberry I did not like.

[William Prystauk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I met Mr. Maberry at a Greater Lehigh Valley Writer's Group event near Easton, Pennsylvania. Since the author had so many works, including numerous series, I purchased the anthology as a way of introduction.

“Empty Graves” did not disappoint and I did not want the book to end.

As a horror fan, I am bored by lazy writing and authors or screenwriters that cater to tropes. Maberry avoids both in a multitude of ways. Most importantly, he creates characters we can care about and root for even as they face the abyss.

The anthology is comprised of a series of tales that cover different time periods and situations, and each is a stand-alone.

I was drawn in by Maberry’s storytelling prowess and his commitment to not holding himself back. Each story evolves organically and nothing is contrived. The author gets out of his own way and allows each story to come to its own conclusion.

In general, the overall narrative proved to be compelling and thought provoking, when most might expect a series of shallow tales about the undead. Thankfully, this is not the case. Better still, with most anthologies, some tales resonate while others wither, but I am hard pressed to find a story without merit.

This has been a fantastic introduction into Maberry’s horror universe and I look forward to reading much more.

[Severina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this collection of (mostly) zombie short stories. The majority of the stories feature the classic zombie we all know and are terrified of – no thinking zombies or tool-holding zombies here. A couple of the stories are based in the same world as Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, even featuring his iconic farmhouse, and a couple more take place in Maberry’s own Rot & Ruin world, a series I’ve avoided because I thought it might be watered down because it’s considered YA, but since my favourite story in this anthology came from that world, I clearly need to revise that opinion. There was really only one clunker in the bunch, which is super impressive.

[Jenny Coyne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm going to pretend that whoever is reading this review knows nothing about Jonathan Maberry or his books. If you do, then you already knew this would be a 5 star book.

These short stories are all zombie related in some shape or form. There are a few tie-ins to his novels but can easily be read with no prior knowledge. What I enjoyed most about the book is that while all of the stories are written by the same author, they are greatly varied in theme and you are never given the chance to get bored or to feel that any one story is redundant. The man seriously has an infinite amount of ideas and how to spin them!

[Andreas Acevedo Dunlop Strom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of 16 excellent short stories that all have a bite to them. I had read maybe a third of them before (and was happy to re-read them), but most if them were new to me. Hard to pick favourites in this, but Chokepoint and Jack & Jill are both amazing, and tie into the Dead Of Night series. There's just something about the atmosphere to those stories. The stories set quite a bit in the past also have a fantastic atmosphere to them. Maberry makes it seem so REAL.
HIGHLY recommended if you have even a passing interest in zombies.

[EM3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Varied stories in the genre

This book is a collection of tales, some of which are very good. By genre, zombie tales, but what makes them interesting is that Maberry delves into varied sub-genres under this topic. From military SF/horror to historical fiction, from plague causing viruses to meteors--the common theme is the undead, but how they came to be varies with each tale. Ghost stories. Survival stories. Beginning of the apocalypse. In media res. Post apocalyptic. Definitely a fun read.

[Rickey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zombie short stories

This was a solid collection of zombie tales from the master, Maberry. I especially liked the small paragraphs before each story talking about the mindset of why he wrote the story.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since I loved his Rot & Ruin series, I knew I'd enjoy these. I was right! There was one or two that I was kind of meh about, but the majority were pretty good! I had a good time reading these, and look forward to reading some more of Maberry's stuff in the future.

[Aaron Advani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great collection of short stories, a really good entry point into the Jonathan Maberry universe

[Athena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Would give it 6 stars if I could

Anyone who loves zombie stories or shows or movies needs to read this book. It might be my new favorite. All of the endings were perfect.

[LizKat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of zombie stories that are well written. Enjoyable but also forgettable hence 4 stars instead of 5.

[Chuck McKenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrifying collection of zombie tales from one of the masters of the genre, Empty Graves offers a wonderful range of stories of the undead; some set against the background of his previous zombie novels, others offering fresh new takes on the trope. Any fan of modern zombie literature - or indeed, of great horror in general - would be doing themselves a huge favour in checking out this book.

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say, Maberry knows how to tell awesome tales. I loved this book and recommend it to any fan of the zombie/horror genres. Love the nods to Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Joe Ledger.