Every field must have its new blood, for without it the field would wither. So it is in our field that new writers irrigate this fertile soil with the rich, coppery elixir of their relatively untested talents. Open Graves is an anthology of horror tales showcasing the talents of a group of writers of which you might not have heard—but it's a safe bet some of them you'll hear a lot about in the not too distant future.

Thin and unassuming, Open Graves sports an appropriately gothic cover photograph of a time-worn grave angel—a cover which sets the mood nicely for what's inside: Eleven stories of varying success but united in the fact that every one shows its author's promise. Even the less successful tales—those with which you might nitpick about a word choice here, a plot turn there, or maybe an errant tense change—still engage and hold interest based on their style or use of atmosphere or dialogue, or whatever tricks their authors used to tell their dark visions.

Cullen Bunn's "Still Waters" sets the tone nicely, a well-told tale of small-town grotesquery full of realistic dialogue. Mark Worthen's nightmarish vignette of parental anguish suffers only for its uninspired title. "Guardians of Midnight" by J. P. Edwards is a tad too subtle, requiring two reads, but its tone and atmosphere fit the collection very well indeed. Curtis Hoffmeister takes a page from Michael Slade and sets "Tasty Goth Chicks," a straightforward but deliciously satirical actioner featuring good and bad lycanthropes, at the World Horror Convention. Jane Gwaltney spins "Dead On" into a writer versus publisher love story gone horribly wrong thanks to the purple prose provided by an antique pen. C. Dennis Moore's Laymonesque "Terrible Thrills" is the collection's obligatory Halloween fable. "Starlight Delight," by Jimmie Earls, may keep you from enjoying your next diner meal, and Brian Newton's near-erotic "Fruit on the Vine" reminds one of a perfect "Tales from the Crypt" episode. Spencer Allen's "Anthony's Army" is an abortion parable, W. B. Vogel's "Alpha Male" revisits parental anguish in the pack dynamic, and Milton Grasle's "24"-style thriller blends ancient evil with modern terrorism.

As design goes, Open Graves is crisp and clean, but one would have preferred a better text separator than a large asterisk to signal time shifts (although a stylized gravestone might have been considered too cute, a more gothic symbol surely exists). Never mind, it's not about the pages, really, but the stories they carry. As an introduction to the Midwestern Writers of Horror, as the table of contents describes itself, Open Graves is successful enough to recommend on the strength of its stories. And that's nothing to sneeze at, not at all.