All Your Friends Are Here

The 13 stories in this eerie collection from Shaw (One Hand to Hold, One Hand to Carve) explore the unnerving and grotesque with glee. In “Roots in the Ground,” a man deliberates on inviting his estranged daughter to spend Thanksgiving with him after a creepy experience in the woods involving an entity that reminded him of his daughter’s childhood imaginary friend. “Go with the Flow” centers on a construction worker with a bionic arm who grapples with the limits of his own body after an ill-advised tryst with a married client goes bloodily awry. Woodland prey animals have taken control of the world in “Man vs. Bomb,” forcing humans into a sadistic game of survival in which they must run from one another or be detonated by explosives. “My Dad Bought a Space Shuttle” follows a trans teenager whose father’s eccentric new hobby has not actually made life any more fulfilling. Shaw’s loose, easy style fits the stories like a glove, and the collection does an admirable job of taking the tales’ premises to their logical conclusions, even if they have a tendency to pull back at the last minute and leave things feeling slightly unfinished. Fans of new weird horror will want to check this out. (Dec.)