North American Lake Monsters

Stories

By: Nathan Ballingrud

Narrated by: Travis Young

In this striking and bleak, yet luminous debut collection, Nathan Ballingrud, winner of the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award, uses the trappings of the Gothic and the uncanny to investigate a distinctly American landscape: The loneliest and darkest corners of contemporary life.

Ballingrud’s stories are love stories. They’re also monster stories. Sometimes the monsters collected here are vampires or werewolves. Sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, brothers, or ex-wives, and sometimes they wear the faces we see in our mirrors. The people in these stories - ex-cons, single parents, unemployed laborers, kids seduced by extremism - are stranded by life, driven to desperate acts by love and a longing for connection. Sometimes they’re ruined; sometimes redeemed. They are always recognizably, wonderfully, and terrifyingly human. Even at their most monstrous.

©2013 Nathan Ballingrud (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

The last story is good

I was not that impressed. The last story was good because my MIL jut died. The other stories were good but then just ended. I get the author trying to develop suspense and allowing the reader to think about it to see the horror. But, it was annoying. It was like watching a show and missing the ending, annoying. Sorry. I really wanted to like it.

Interesting

Some of the stories were hard to follow and I was a bit lost if they were psychological or physically happening. Sometimes I fell a little out of interest. It was pretty eerie though. With that being said, the narrator practically brings every character to life with his acting, barely a dull moment while he reads, his accent is really good too!

great stories

these are stories about monsters. Most of them are people. the stories are very strong.

it just feels unfinished

many of the stories stop at points that I suppose are meant to feel mysterious, but they just feel lazy and unresolved. Also some of the dialogue is hard to follow the way its written when read aloud. The narrator did the best he could.

Superb Writing, Bleak Horror, Fantastic Narration

I agree with one review that this collection may not be for everyone, but if you are drawn to multilayered atmospheric horror with dark new twists on classic tropes, then these stories are for you. They can be bleak, but also tense and disturbing. The narrator is a perfect husky baritone who reads the tales flawlessly. I wish all this author's collections were read by the same narrator.