BROKEN HEARTS & OTHER HORRORS

Everyday people become entangled with unavoidable terrors in Kane’s collection of creepy tales.

The book begins with “Past Is Prologue,” in which Marcus vows to marry Rufina, a slave he’s completely fallen for. But their love blossoms in Herculaneum, the ancient Roman town that readers know Mt. Vesuvius will doom. Many of the 12 stories that follow are plays on familiar figures or horror scenarios. “The Last Bride” takes place in early 17th-century Hungary, where a certain Elizabet Bàthory makes a connection with a mercenary who goes by the name of Dracul. The titular “Suzanne” finds a potential romantic interest in police officer Jericho as the two bond while holed up in a local police station during a zombie apocalypse. The author offers a few selections that stray from more common genre tropes; “Dokkaebi” features a 1400-year-old shapeshifting goblin from Korean mythology. The author builds solid foundations for these tales, from the mood-setting environments (“Before Iraq, he never noticed the various shades of green sported by the aspens, oaks, walnuts, and other leafy trees of West Virginia. Soon the green would change to a blaze of yellows, oranges, and reds”) to the well-drawn casts. The characters include couples in unstable marriages; a ginseng hunter and his estranged surrogate father; and a popular doctor of theology alongside his president-elect son. Kane’s unadorned prose rarely lingers on the violent bits; his straightforward approach occasionally results in tales that, even with monsters in the mix, aren’t so scary. Still, he delivers shocking turns, whether in the form of a surprise ending or a character’s unexpected revelation. Galal’s black-and-white artwork accompanies each story, illustrating such haunting moments as grieving in the falling rain and recalling images from a fuzzy memory.

Striking characters drive this worthwhile batch of unnerving stories.