I read Dead Leaves by Kealan Patrick Burke and added Dead of Winter immediately to the list. Dead Leaves is a great novel to read at Halloween and during autumn. Dead of Winter, which targets Christmas and wintertime, is not quite at the level as its cousin collection.
A sample of the stories include mysterious snowmen who appear out of nowhere, a man trapped with his failing-memory father, and a snowstorm that empties a small town. The creep factor of the stories increases at how Burke expresses the isolation winter naturally brings. This sense of loneliness pervades most of the stories and works to their advantage. And the writing is quite good. I have no doubt Kealan Patrick Burke is a master storyteller. All the stories kept me glued to the page.
Yet.
Snowmen, Father Christmas, and winter storms are all present, yet the predominant feeling I left this collection with was depression rather than fear. Some stories succeed better than others, Visitation Rights and They Know, but others left me (pardon the pun) cold. None of the offerings are not good, but do they belong in a collection that promises horror stories about winter? A few of these could have been set at any time of the year.
Overall, if you want your horror stories introspective, dourful, and more Poe than Lovecraft then this is a collection for you. Uncanny, speculative stories do exist here, but you’ll have to make your way through many of the offerings here to get to them.