🐱 Jaffareadstoo is thrilled to be hosting today's stop on the Help the Witch Blog Tour 🐱
A collection of folk ghost stories from the Sunday Times
bestselling author Tom Cox
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| Unbound 18 October 2018 My thanks to the publishers and Random Things Tours for my copy of the book and the invitation to be part of this tour |
What's it all about...
Inspired by our native landscapes, saturated by the shadows beneath trees and behind doors, listening to the run of water and half-heard voices, Tom Cox’s first collection of short stories is a series of evocative and unsettling trips into worlds previously visited by the likes of M. R. James and E. F. Benson.
Railway tunnels, the lanes and hills of the Peak District, family homes, old stones, shreds fluttering on barbed wire, night drawing in, something that might be an animal shifting on the other side of a hedge: Tom has drawn on his life-long love of weird fiction, folklore and nature’s unregarded corners to write a collection of stories that will delight fans old and new, and leave them very uneasy about turning the reading lamp off.
My thoughts about it...
The ten short stories which make up this imaginative collection of short stories are a mixture of strange little tales which are perfect reading for this autumnal season. Some, like the opener, Help the Witch, make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, whilst others, like Listings, are so quirky that you can't help but be intrigued by the message they convey. All are written with a keen eye for the unusual and more than once I was reminded of those ghost tales of a distant past when the cunning folk would gather around a shadowy fire on a cold winter evening and tell dark tales of countryside and hearthside.
Help the Witch is one of those short story collections which made reading them such a joy. A different hidden gem every 30 or so pages which are all so different that it's really difficult to explain their effect, except to say that collectively they're deliciously quirky, some are a little bit scary and others are so genuinely astute that even the most mundane of observations are suddenly changed into something quite special.
The ten short stories which make up this imaginative collection of short stories are a mixture of strange little tales which are perfect reading for this autumnal season. Some, like the opener, Help the Witch, make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, whilst others, like Listings, are so quirky that you can't help but be intrigued by the message they convey. All are written with a keen eye for the unusual and more than once I was reminded of those ghost tales of a distant past when the cunning folk would gather around a shadowy fire on a cold winter evening and tell dark tales of countryside and hearthside.
Help the Witch is one of those short story collections which made reading them such a joy. A different hidden gem every 30 or so pages which are all so different that it's really difficult to explain their effect, except to say that collectively they're deliciously quirky, some are a little bit scary and others are so genuinely astute that even the most mundane of observations are suddenly changed into something quite special.
There is no doubt that the author has a keen eye for observation and a real skill with words. Help the Witch, from its glorious cover, to its enigmatic concluding story kept me entertained from start to finish.
About the Author
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| Tom Cox and Bear |
Tom Cox has 70k followers on Twitter and 25k on Instagram. He is also the man behind the enormously popular Why My Cat is Sad account, which has 300k followers. He is the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Good, The Bad and The Furry. Help the Witch was Unbound fastest-funding fiction title, reaching its target in little over a day.
Twitter @cox_tom #HelpTheWitch
@unbounders
#RandomThingsTours
Huge thanks for this fabulous Blog Tour support Jo x
ReplyDeleteA pleasure, as always, Anne. Thanks for the invitation to the tour x
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