JournalStone's Warped Words for Twisted Minds

Without a doubt, blood, guts, and gore are pretty freaky. I've walked out of movies because I just couldn't stand the sight of any more red stuff splattered across the screen. Note to Hollywood – sometimes, less is more. And, that's exactly what you get with the Warped Words Anthology that JournalStone published this year.

I'm not easily scared, but some of these stories are so psychologically chilling that I had to look away from the page from time to time just to make sure I was still in my own living room. This isn't your everyday book o' horror. There are no slash killings, no creatures that belong in Halloween movies, and no strange aliens coming to conquer our planet.

Instead, these stories rattled my understanding of reality. They climbed into my brain and made me second-guess whether all family members are safe – do they the capacity to hurt us? Will they consciously seduce and annihilate others? Or will they destroy us with their relentless, ruthless push for unattainable "perfection?" Undoubtedly, like me, you'll feel your hairs rise when you consider whether spirits and carnivorous creatures share our world, lurking just beyond the fringes of our day-to-day activities. Scratch just below the surface, and what you find could horrify you.

It's not every compilation of short stories that brings together such a talented group of relatively new authors. Each story and author brings a different brand of horror to jump off the page – it's shocking how twisted and decayed the human imagination can be. On every page, I was forced to consider that even in our daily lives – in our supposedly normal society that has manners and is questionably civilized, true horrors exist.  Read this compilation, and you'll realize quickly that you don't need guns, knives, fangs, or monsters under the bed to be terrified.

Open the book only if you want to be scared and jump at the noises in the dark corners of your house. Go ahead – you know you want to.