Blog Tour: Tales from the Coffee Pot – Jim Ody

*I received a free copy of this book with thanks to the author and to Zoé of Zooloo’s Book Tours and Question Mark Press.  The decision to review and my opinions are my own.*

Blurb: For the first time, the best of Jim Ody’s published short-stories are together in one anthology, including four previously unreleased.

Twelve twisted tales that touch on psychological/thriller, horror and YA, including: A detective sent to a travelling circus to find a missing boy; A guy with a mysterious trunk must meet a stranger at a motel to survive; A doll turns up and becomes a little girl’s best friend. Then things turn strange; A surprise birthday party is memorable, if only the birthday boy survives; and a group of orphans find the world is about to end…

1 The Reveal
2 A Moth in The Jar
3 The I-Scream Van
4 Teaching Tom
5 Boat Trip
6 The Trunk
7 The Day
8 A Doll Named Sasha
9 Surprise Party
10 The Orphans
11 Hide & Seek
12 Virgin Women From Outta Space

This is a creepy, and occasionally gory, collection of dark horror stories.

Within you will find disguises and delusions, zombies, monsters (human and not), zombies, psychopaths and more zombies. Some of the stories loosely link together along traditional horror-trope lines – a few about children taking on urban legends/campfire stories with dire consequences, and a couple about a disturbing ‘plague’. These tropes are classic for a reason, as they play on human fears of disease, predators, the dark, our own minds turning against us, and Jim Ody gives each story his own personal touches to update and evolve the familiar into something new (I would say ‘fresh’, but I’m not sure that word can be applied when zombies are involved!).

Many of the stories have a clever twist at the end, making them perfect for dipping in and out of when you want a quick spook. Quite a few also have children, teens or young adults as the main characters, reminding me of classic YA horror short story anthologies from the Point Horror and Goosebumps series – appropriate as Jim Ody is one of the authors writing for Question Mark Press’ new QMP Horror collection (you can find my review of Camp Death here!).

My personal favourite story from this collection was A Doll Named Sasha; an incredibly creepy standalone story about a child and her mysterious new doll, which took an old classic trope and turned it on its head.

If you enjoy films like Psycho or Shutter Island, urban horror legends, campfire scare stories and YA horror upgraded for an adult readership, then you will savour this chilling selection.

‘Without taking her eyes off the doll, she put the milk in the kitchen, her breakfast now forgotten, and returned to the doll. What was it doing there? Where did it come from? Who put it there? All of these questions tumbled around in her small head, but in conclusion, she didn’t care. The doll was hers, of this she was sure! But there was something about it. It was so different from Honey. It had hypnotizing eyes that appeared to look right inside of her. The face was so real.’

– Jim Ody, ‘A Doll Named Sasha’ in Tales from the Coffee Pot

You can follow Jim Ody on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Tales from the Coffee Pot is available on Amazon right now.

Don’t forget to check out the other blog stops on the tour for more great reviews and content (see the poster below for details)!