From a beyond-the-grave stalker to prankster devil worshippers, this collection takes readers along on a spooky graveyard walk in the company of 10 contemporary masters of horror and suspense.

Reviews:

From the Publisher

Ten extraordinary authors spin hair-raising original tales collected by the anthologist of GOTHIC!

With scary stories by: M. T. Anderson, Holly Black, Libba Bray, Herbie Brennan, Nancy Etchemendy, Annette Curtis Klause, Kelly Link, Deborah Noyes, Marcus Sedgwick, and Chris Wooding

Enter the murky world of the undead. From a beyond-the-grave stalker to prankster devil worshippers, from a childish ghost of the future to a vampire lover with bloody ties to the past, the characters in these ten original stories will send shivers down your spine. Why do we fear the undead? Find out in this spooky companion volume to GOTHIC! TEN ORIGINAL DARK TAKES, and enjoy another graveyard walk in the company of ten contemporary masters of horror and suspense.

Alan Review

Deborah Noyes has expertly collected a broad range of stories sure to interest and terrify a teenage audience. While dealing with the dead remains the connecting theme throughout the 10 stories, plot lines, characters, themes, and settings vary from a teenage heroin who seduces vampires in order to kill them and avenge her sister's death in Annette Curtis Klause's "Kissing Dead Boys," to Marcus Sedgwick's "The Heart of Another," a story of a Poe fan and heart transplant patient who unwillingly kills her donor's murderer. Each suspenseful tale is expertly told creating a collection of short stories much greater than the sum of its parts. Readers from ninth grade and up will enjoy these haunting tales. The Restless Dead works best for individual readers with an interest in similar themes. A must for any Poe fan, this collection is not recommended for the faint or weak hearted. Reviewer: Chris Goering

Children's Literature

Readers will be thrilled and chilled by just how far the dead will go to remain among the living in these ten short stories by some of the most popular authors in YA fantasy. From start to finish, these powerful stories are engaging and well-told. "The Wrong Grave" by Kelly Link tells the story of a would-be grave-robber and his fateful error. Chris Wooding's "The House and the Locket" gives a young man a harrowing look at what the future could hold. "Kissing Dead Boys" by Annette Curtis Klause takes on vampires while Marcus Sedgwick's "The Heart of Another" is a haunting remake of Poe's classic "The Tell-Tale Heart." Herbie Brennan's "The Necromancers" is darkly funny, and the end of editor Deborah Noyes' own "No Visible Power" is both surprising and well-foreshadowed. "Bad Things" by Libba Bray might be a bit disturbing to fans of her novels, but is well-written and thrilling. M. T. Anderson's "The Gray Boy's Work" uses fantasy elements in the unlikely period of the American Revolution. "The Poison Eaters" by Holly Black is a chilling tale of familial deceptions, and Nancy Etchemendy's "Honey in the Wound" rounds out the collection with a poignant look at a family facing its breaking point. Taken individually, each story is a fantastic piece of fiction; together, they form a brilliant collection that is not for the faint of heart.

VOYA

Noyes's follow-up to her sinister, short story collection, Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales (Candlewick, 2004/VOYA August 2004), includes ten new yarns to send shivers up readers' spines. In the tales of her latest supernatural anthology, a forlorn boy poet digs up the wrong dead girlfriend, some teenagers' search for Satanists goes horribly awry, and a family suffers the wrath of an angry poltergeist. Popular authors, including Libba Bray, Chris Wooding, and Holly Black, contribute fiction that ranges from wryly amusing-Kelly Link's The Wrong Grave and Herbie Brennan's The Necromancers-to downright frightful in Wooding's The House and the Locket. The new anthology will not disappoint avid fans of undead creatures and things that go bump in the night. The cover alone, with pale, deathly hands clawing the earth, will draw readers in. Not all of the contributions work as well as others, however. At best, some stories evoke American popular culture's answer to Poe and Le Fanu. At worst, they read like an overwrought Goosebumps novel. Of the ten stories in the volume, Annette Curtis Klause's Kissing Dead Boys, a vampire-slayer tale with a twist, and M. T. Anderson's bare-bones prose and curious vernacular in The Gray Boy's Work shine through. Booktalk this one to budding horror-philes who have outgrown Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (HarperCollins, 1981).

Anthony C. DoyleCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information. - School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up
A mixed bag. The book opens with Kelly Link's forgettable "The Wrong Grave" and is followed by Chris Wooding's "The House and the Locket," a pale imitation of a Poe tale. The third story, "Kissing Dead Boys," however, is classic Annette Curtis Klause and it alone may be worth the price of the book. Klause takes the tired-sexy-vampire and vampire-hunter conventions and makes them fresh in just 14 pages. Marcus Sedgwick, Libba Bray, and Holly Black also contribute notable stories that their fans will enjoy. On balance this will be a worthwhile addition to most collections.