A review by jamessabata
Shadows Over Main Street by T. Fox Dunham, Richard Thomas, Gary A. Braunbeck, Josh Malerman, Cameron Suey, Galen Dara, Brian Hodge, Kevin Lucia, Ramsey Campbell, Nick Mamatas, M. Fersner, Adrian Ludens, D. Alexander Ward, Lucy A. Snyder, Paul Carrick, Aaron Polson, Mary SanGiovanni, Tim Curran, Rena Mason, James Chambers, Chesya Burke, John Sunseri, Doug Murano, Stephanie M. Wytovich, Jay Wilburn, Lisa Morton, Vincent Chong, John Coulthart

5.0

Lovecraftian fiction set on the streets of every small town you’ve ever wandered through. Cosmic horror attacking the peace and tranquility of towns where people remember “that one time there was a car accident.” In the small nestled corners where people still move at a leisurely pace, Shadows Over Main Street introduces reasons to run.

These streets are no longer safe.

Twenty authors came together to create this amazing new take on Lovecraft’s world. What’s that you say? You’re unfamiliar with Lovecraft’s work? Before this anthology, so was I. Luckily, the foreword, written by the great Ramsey Campbell, provides a detailed orientation into this style of writing and sets the mood for the stories which follow. But even if you were to skip Campbell’s words, you’d get the hang of it really quickly. This collection is geared for those of us who are new to the genre as well as those who have survived under Lovecraft’s dark umbrella for many years.

Every story in this collection more than deserves to be mentioned individually, but the ones that truly stuck with me afterward included Lisa Morton’s “The Ogre”, Josh Malerman’s “Fiddlehead Party on Carpenters’ Farm”, and “This Stagnant Breath of Change” by Brian Hodge.
This collection not only attacks our fears. It assaults them in the places we’ve been taught to feel the safest; and does so in such a satisfying way, we’re almost okay with it.

Not that the universe left us much of a choice anyway…