Greener Pastures is simply OUTSTANDING! This is literary dark fiction at its finest.

These stories almost all deal with heavy themes like loss, grief, and loneliness and yet, they're all distinctly different from each other. A lot of them reminded me of the stories of Robert Aickman, Laird Barron or Thomas Ligotti, but I actually liked Wehunt's tales more than those. I've been thinking about why that is and here's what I've come up with: Laird Barron and Thomas Ligotti are both fantastic with dark, nihilistic fiction and I don't find these stories to have that nihilistic flavor. (I didn't feel like killing myself when I finished Greener Pastures-so that's a plus. Also, the very last story, Bookends , ended on a hopeful note which was SO PERFECT, it gave me shivers.) Where Aickman is concerned, I enjoy his weird tales, but I often find myself left wanting, whereas with Greener Pastures I always felt satisfied at the end of the story, with more of an understanding, (I think), of what the author intended.

All that said, my favorite stories were: Greener Pastures -a weird little piece about truckers and the "spaces between". Without anything overtly scary, this tale made me feel extremely unsettled. October Film Haunt: Under the House -this story had a distinct House of Leaves vibe to it, minus all the side stories and footnotes. After I read it, the cover of the book finally made sense to me. Just a glimpse of that dog with the wooden crown in his mouth gives me the serious creeps. I also adored Dancers the story of a long, but unfulfilling marriage, some trees, and a creepy-ass thing in a jar. It makes me shudder just to think of it.

I enjoyed almost every. single. story in this collection. Each one was beautifully written, thought provoking and some of them caused genuine unease. What more could a dark fiction lover ask for? Oh, I know- MORE, please!

My highest recommendation to everyone, but-especially to fans of weird tales like those of Aickman, Ligotti and Barron. This one stands right up there with the best of them, so don't miss out!

*Shock Totem provided me a free e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. This is it.*
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Michael Wehunt's Greener Pastures is an exquisite collection. The stories capture melancholy, loneliness, grief, regret, and those twin horrors; that the world is not what it once seemed, and that the world is actually as bad as we always quietly feared it would be. There is a highly visual, almost cinematic quality to the prose too; and as I have said before this collection features my new favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone (Greener Pastures) and The Outer Limits (Dancers), as well as a genuinely frightening found-footage film (October Film Haunt: Under the House). It also contains one of the actually saddest and most haunting stories I've ever read (The Inconsolable), and one which maybe me feel like I'd been punched in the chest (Bookends) which vacillates between the intense loss of a loved one and the sickening fear of what that emotion may drive someone to do. I cannot recommend this collection enough. These kinds of stories are why I read weird fiction; the exploration of those haunted and liminal spaces, both in the world and in ourselves. ( )