Black Feathers Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology

Black Feathers is a short story collection, each tale inside centering around birds.

As the collections editor, Ellen Datlow, says in her introduction: "Birds are usually loved for their beauty and their song." But that is not the case in this collection of avian tales.

There are 16 short tales in Black Feathers, each of them giving you a peek at the "dark side to the avian."  Most of the birds in the stories are corvids, which is the family of birds that include ravens, crows and even Jays.

In this collection, you will find people who can turn into birds.  There are birds who help solve crimes and birds who sneak their own young into a human family.

Admittedly a couple of the tales left me confused, but I did enjoy the majority of the collection.  Some of my favorite stories include  

The Mathematical Inevitability of Corvids by Seanan McGuire in which a young autistic girl must count crows each day because the number tells her important futures, and if the numbers are wrong bad things can happen.

Pigeon From Hell by Stephen Graham Jones, in which a young girl finds herself being haunted by a young boys pet pigeon after a horrible accident.

The Crow Palace by Priya Sharma, in which a young woman finds herself back home with her sister after her father passes.  She finds out after all these years that one of them does not really belong in the family.

I recommend this collection to anyone who likes a good scary story, and who is a fan of birds.  It might make you look at our feathered friends a little differently.

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Black Feathers Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology will be available in February of 2017.  You can pre-order your copy today from amazon in Kindle or Hardcover.

Don't have a Kindle?  Download the Free Kindle App available on most devices.


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I received an advance readers copy of Black Feathers from NetGally in exchange for an honest review.  All thoughts on this item are my own.

Dancing Dogs Stories by Jon Katz

16 Stories (mostly) about dogs.

Not all dogs are dancing in the book "Dancing Dogs: Stories" by John Katz, but at least one of them does.

If the title doesn't give it all away, this is a collection of dog stories.  Mostly.  One of them (titled Barn Cat) has a dog in it but its mostly about a cat and a rooster.  One of them is about a donkey, but I won't tell you which one, it'll be a surprise at the end.

This book has dancing dogs, working dogs, old dogs, young dogs and mind reading dogs.  There are shelties and pugs, terriers and German Shepherds.  It even gives you a humorous peek at dog heaven, which unfortunately means there are a couple of dead dogs in this book too.

There are sad dog stories that will make you cry, like Gracies Last Walk (which also happens to be the first story in the book.)

There are stories of rescue, like "Laura Passerby" who helps save the life of a chained dog, and Puppy Commando, where a normally well behaved young girl decides that she must have a certain puppy RIGHT NOW.

There are touching stories, like "Old Dogs" where and old farmer and his old dog encounter an old coyote and decide it might be time to give up the farming life.

In once case, "Ernie and the Bottled-Water Contest", there is a dog with spooky mind reading abilities.

Not all stories will give dog lovers the warm fuzzies though.  Some of them ("Ernie and the Bottled-Water Contest" again) will make any dog lover at least a little angry, and the story "Luther and Minnie in Heaven" certainly put one amazon reviewer in annoyance that life on earth is the doggy equivalent of Hell.

Over all I say this doggy short story collection is worth at least 4 stars out of 5.