Amazon Original Stories released a five-story Kindle collection called The Shivers on April 15, featuring fiction from some of the biggest names in horror.
Joe Hill, Stephen Graham Jones, Grady Hendrix, Catriona Ward, and Owen King are the authors tapped to write the short stories, which range in length from 35 pages to 46 pages with the option to listen to them as Audiobooks.
Hill (Heart-Shaped Box) and Jones (My Heart is a Chainsaw) are four-time Bram Stoker Award-winning authors. Hendrix (Witchcraft for Wayward Girls) is the Stoker Award-winning author of Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction. Ward (The Last House on Needless Street) is the author of Sundial, a 2022 Stoker nominee for Superior Achievement in a Novel. Owen King co-authored Sleeping Beauties with Stephen King, a book that was nominated for a Stoker in 2017 for Superior Achievement in a Novel.
Here are the five releases with Amazon descriptions. Clicking on the titles takes you to their Amazon pages where you can purchase them.
- Jackknife by Joe Hill: Ruined by scandal, Dennis Lange is hoping for a comeback. Selling the story of a cursed tree could make his future — if it doesn’t kill him. Dennis awakens something evil when he removes a decades-old jackknife from the trunk of a gnarled old sycamore. Once pinned in place — now thoughtlessly freed — the tree returns to its roots. An act of vigilante justice took place under its boughs long ago. But its taste for blood has only grown stronger.
- The Indigo Room by Stephen Graham Jones: When the lights go out and the slideshow begins, middle manager Jennifer has a disturbing vision: a headless colleague right across the boardroom table. Is it a trick of the light, or a vision of the future? She tries to brush it off and salvage the afternoon, but when her ex unexpectedly drops off her son at the office after school, suddenly her whole world takes an alarming turn.
- The Blanks by Grady Hendrix: Residents have an unspoken pact with the island’s unnatural inhabitants: ignore them, live happily. But one boy can’t look away and pays the price. Jeckle Island offers Rachel’s children the chance to spend summers roaming wild and free, as long as they follow the rules. But when her son comes face to face with a terror they dare not speak of, she must prepare for their perfect world to change forever.
- Night and Day in Misery by Catriona Ward: In the gloom of her hotel, a mother readies to rejoin her past. Room 17 was the last stop on her husband and son’s journey. Eight years after their deaths, Stella books the same room, hoping to commune with their memories. But as she tries to sleep, disturbing and urgent visions blur the lines between reality and the supernatural, and the other side sends a terrifying message.
- Letter Slot by Owen King: Sensing his mother’s failing health, a struggling teenager pours out his worries in a letter and drops it through the mail slot of an abandoned show house. He’s surprised when a response arrives, promising good fortune for the price of just one name: someone he hates. He’d give anything for his mother. But the true cost may be more than he’s willing to pay.
LIONEL RAY GREEN 
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