The second story in The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. 

This story is about a group of school teachers, who proclaim themselves the Redfield girls after the school they teach at, who go on vacation during the summer with each other. This years location is Lake Crescent in Washington, a lake with a notoriously bad history and with family connections to one of the girls. A unforeseen fate awaits them there...

 

 

This story, while not very scary, is still terrific and I loved every minute of it and is made even better by Lake Crescent being a real lake, with all the stories the characters tell about it being true to some extent. 

 

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5 Stars

Every now and then, when I have the money, I'll get on Amazon and have a little ebook shopping spree. Here are the books I hauled yesterday:

 

 

Lately, I've been trying to familiarize myself with Kealan Patrick Burke's work since many of the reviewers on here and Goodreads who I trust love his stuff. I read The Turtle Boy near the beginning of the year but didn't really like it. It didn't feel like the story was long enough and the whole plot seemed to rely on coincidences. 

 

But I still want to try more of Burke's work to see if that was just a bad book, so I thought I'd start here, with a short story collection revolving around the mysterious town of Milestone. I am a little bummed because Thirty Miles South Of Dry County is in this collection but you have to buy Currency Of Souls separately, which together are supposed to form a little series. Oh well, I'll read Thirty Miles and just hope I don't get confused. I also have Jack and Jill on my Kindle.

 

 

I'm reading this short story collection right now and loving it. I finished Blackwood's Baby last night and thought it was absolutely amazing, and now I'm a little ways into The Redfield Girls. I want to give this collection five stars already and I'm only twenty percent through.

 

 

I'm kind of scared to read these last two books, because then I won't be able to read about these characters anymore. I really hate it, but I still have to finish these books. I push them on horror fans who haven't read them yet.

 

 

This Darkfuse book looked terrific and I've yet to read any McBride so I'll start here.

 

 

I've heard a lot of interesting things about this collection and what it's about, so I thought I'd give it a try.

 

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Buying books = happy Layton.

The first story in The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. This is an awesome story about a hunting party in the woods behind an estate in Washington, hunting for a giant evil stag that locals say is devil spawn. But there is a lot more to these woods than meets the eye.

 

 

An amazing, chilling story, which many say isn't even the best in this collection. This beats anything in North American Lake Monsters. 

 

5 chilling stars.

After reading Barron's absolutely amazing novel The Croning, I'm extremely excited to start this. 

 

 

Has anyone else read this collection?

Each of these short stories is gripping and suspenseful, making this collection very enjoyable to read. A couple of them stood out to me among the others, perhaps not for the horror they evoked, but just from the prose and interactions of the characters. The first of these is the story about the vacationing women at Crescent Lake. Revolving around the Redfield Girls, the women represent different professional backgrounds, diverse experiences, and a range of ages. The tale unfolded in a gripping and riveting away, making me as the reader eager to keep turning the page (or thumbing my kindle) as the historical tale as well as the weekend happenings progress. This is one of those cannot-put-down-til-the-end stories where you are so curious to know what happens, you forego sleep. The second most memorable story for me was the one that the title of this collection reflects: The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. This story revolves around something that all of us think about, read about, have heard about, and are fearful of at one time or another. These emotions especially evoked as we get older and earnestly wonder about our own immortality or mortality. The tale provokes thoughts on the Dante discussions of levels of purgatory depending on our sins while living life or, in some cases, surviving life; thoughts on whether or not we are already existing in hell, about life here and now and life after. I feel like a broken record, but this is really a thought-provoking set of tales. What the author’s weaved from his mind is truly amazing and all of it rings “true” and honest. It’s as if Barron is just relating what’s been told as opposed to something he has created. I enjoyed them all and would recommend this to those that like horror and stories that make you think.