I’ve been reading the anthologies of Jonathan Oliver for several years. He has a great eye for talent and his books usually have a diverse and fascinating array of contributors. Five Stories High breaks from the standard format to include five novellas from some of the best speculative authors of today, all loosely set within the framing story of being linked to the same building.

As a ‘theme’ it’s quite a relaxed one. It’s obvious that the stories contained within the book are from the genre of ‘weird’ fiction, but the theme allows enough variation as to prevent the novellas feeling restricted by this. There’s a nice range of writing on offer – Maggots by Nina Allan, Priest’s Hole by KJ Parker, Gnaw by Tade Thompson, The Best Story I Can Manage in the Circumstances by Robert Shearman, and Skin Deep by Sarah Lotz.

The building, Irongrove Lodge, is mentioned in the interspersed notes, which offers some insight and background into the history of the dwelling. These snippets, too, help to create a rather unnerving foundation upon which the stories sit. The novella has always felt the perfect length for a horror tale, and the stories in this anthology maximise their potential. Whilst it’s fair to say that not every contribution worked for me, there’s still plenty here to enjoy. Nothing too outright scary, these are tales that probe around in the recesses of the subconscious, and I found myself thinking about them long after I had put the book down. Recommended.

It took me a LONG time to finish this book, which it shouldn't have because it's not a long book, and I love horror, and I love anthologies. I think the thing was that the book wasn't really what I wanted it to be, or what was promised, ie. a collection of haunted house stories. Only the last one by Sarah Lotz was actually, properly a haunted house story, and it did some interesting things with structure too. The penultimate story by Robert Shearman was, as his stuff always is, super super weird. I did like it, as I always like his stuff, but he's hard to anthologise because his work 'doesn't play well with others', let's say. I have enjoyed work from the other writers in this book, but I didn't fall in love with these stories and don't think it's their best work.

I appreciate the chance to read/review this one, but am still leaning towards collections like this just don't work as well for me as full length novels. It does feature a couple of my favorite authors with Parker and Lotz, but it just wasn't enough for me to get over my hangups of the shorter form fiction. Thanks again for the opportunity.

I was quite bugged by this book, the book's descriptive copy mentions both "ghosts" and "terrifying," but that's not what it delivers. It was not horror but rather dark fantasy.

The stories seemed to throw in a mention of the house, rather than being ABOUT the house. It felt like the authors wrote the story they wanted to write, and then just mentioned off-hand that the events occurred in Irongrove Lodge, rather than writing about the Lodge itself.

I did very much enjoy Sarah Lotz's story, the last in this collection, it alone gets 5 stars as she wrote about the house itself, and in a very chilling way, and I always enjoy her multi-narrator format.

I received this review copy from the publisher on NetGalley. Thanks for the opportunity to read and review; I appreciate it!

I love a haunted house story and I love anthologies so was delighted to be offered the chance to read this by Netgalley and the publishers in return for an honest review.
5 Stories High refers to the house as well as the number of stories which are delivered with varying degrees of success.
This book was purchased so I loved it enough to buy , it was spooky, each tale was very different but I would say Sarah Lotz had the strongest tale.
Definitely worth checking out! There's all sorts of things hidden in the history of a house and it might make you look twice when walking past a certain abandoned home in your town... you know the one!

Horror is best in small doses, I think, and this book is a great example of that as it is a collection of horror novellas. Perfect for any horror fan.

I am going to pass on this one as I started the first story and it was not really a horror/ghost stories. I read some reviewers and that seems to be what everyone is saying.

Five Stories High is an anthology edited by Jonathan Oliver that features five horror novellas written by five different authors all set in the same house, a huge mansion called Irongrove Lodge. The stories are loosely linked together by interludes written by Jonathan Oliver. However, since it took me several weeks to read this, I didn’t really pay attention to the interludes and I read the stories as standalones.

I am not a huge horror fan, I don’t especially like horror movies but oddly, I like horror short stories quite a bit and I would like to read more of them so when I saw that Solaris was coming out with this anthology, I was very intrigued. I was especially looking forward reading Tade Thompson and Nina Allan’s stories.

As usual with anthologies, not every single story is going to work for you but, as anthologies go, this one was very strong. Two of the stories were outstanding, one was really good and the other two were interesting enough to be worth a read. My two favorite were Gnaw by Tade Thompson and Skin Deep by Sarah Lotz and I would highly recommend this anthology for those two alone.



Individual Reviews



Maggots by Nina Allan 4*

Willy Randle is a happy young man raised by a loving family, he has a wonderful and caring girlfriend, he is studying at university. He’s promised to a great future.. until the day his aunt, Claire, vanishes for a few instants. When she comes back, Willy is persuaded that something is wrong with her somehow, but he’s the only one who seems to see it. He then starts a quest to find who or what his aunt really is.

It was fascinating little story, extremely well paced and hard to put down. It felt very different from The Harlequin, another novella written by Nina Allan that I read and reviewed last year, the writing was as good but the tone was completely different. It was slow paced but it never was boring, on the contrary. Subtle and eerie, it is definitely one of the best novella I read this year.



Priest’s Hole by K.J. Parker 3*

Following a character who can shapeshift and whose work is to pretend to be other people providing them with alibi when they need them, this story was my least favorite of the collection. Mind you, I wasn’t expecting much from it after reading two other novellas by Parker and I think that I enjoyed this novella the most out of his other works.

Parker is just “not my style”, I find that all his main characters tend to look the same and I am not necesseraly a fan of his writing style. I find it a bit all over the place and his pacing is definitely odd to say the least. Also I think the plot of this story was reminisent of The Last Witness in the sense that both main characters seems to loose their own identity toward the end. If you enjoyed The Last Witness, Priest’s Hole is going to a good read, if you didn’t well, don’t go into this story expecting a lot from it.



Gnaw by Tade Thompson 5*

Tara and Larry decide to buy and move in the house of their dream, Irongrove Lodge, with their two children. However, they soon realize that something really weird is happening in their house and that they might not be the only ones living here.

Sounds like déjà-vu ? However, what could have been a “I read that a hundred times before” story was so very well done that it really managed to grab my attention. Tade Thompson is a terrific writer, the writing, the pacing and the characters were on point. The relationships between all the family members felt real and I could identify with all the characters, including the “bad guys” which is pretty rare for me with this genre. This story is definitely one of the highlights of this collection.



The Best Story I Can Manage Under the Circumstances by Robert Shearman 3*

I don’t even know how to explain this one actually because it is pretty messed up. I will just say that it begins with a woman giving birth to a head.

Do I really need to say more? This story is insane, maybe a bit too much for me but at least, I can’t say that I ever read a similar story before. However, it didn’t grab me as much as the other stories and it is probably because it is a bit all over the place pacing-wise. I would still recommend it because as I said, it surprised me quite a bit, it’s the first time I read a Shearman story, but I definitely want to read other things by him now.



Skin Deep by Sarah Lotz 5*

This story has a very interesting structure because it is told from the perspective of many side characters and it is mainly following the aftermath of a crime committed in Irongrove Lodge. Malika and Robin just moved there when Robin started to get a bit too obsessed with it, so much so in fact, that it just got under his skin. Literally.

Another great story, I read this one very quickly because I really wanted to know what was going to happen next and, even if, in a way it was very predictable, the execution was so good that I didn’t mind at all!



So overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the collection, even if the stories were all set in the same place, they were all very different form one another and I definitely think that it is worth a read even if you don’t usually read horror stories!

This was a good collection. It reminded me a bit of Eidolon Avenue in that each story is set in one residence. This is something that I am seeing emerge in horror writing lately, and this one was well executed.

3.5 stars
“Five Stories High” is an anthology compiling five standalone novellas, linked by the fact that all of them are set in Irongrove Lodge, a quite heavily haunted house. When I first read about this book, I thought it looked really promising, as it was devoted exclusively to novellas (one of my favorite formats), the tittle was really clever, and it included stories by K. J. Parker and Robert Shearman, two writers I love.
The five stories are quite different, but they all fall more into the category of dark fiction/weird than pure horror. “Priest’s Hole”, just another in K.J. Parker’s recent series of brilliant novellas, was my favorite piece in the book (and I'll include it in my next Recommended Reading Post). I also liked quite a lot “Maggots”, by Nina Allan, although I felt a bit let down by the ending; and “Skin Deep”, with a multiple point-of-view structure that works perfectly well. Although I felt not so enthusiastic about “Gnaw”, by Tade Thompson, this story was also worth reading. Unfortunately, the weird, comic and even surrealistic Shearman’s story, the strangest by far in the anthology, didn’t work for me at all.
“Five Stories High” was a varied and entertaining reading, and I’m pretty sure any dark fantasy lover will find something to his taste in it.

A major disappointment!! I was expecting so much more than this book could deliver. Waste of time.

Collection of stories of the same location - some better than others. Like the premise wasn't sure of the final result though.

The book contains five different stories about a building named Irongrove Lodge. It has a history . It has stories about the people who lived here. This is a building that is in our time and place yet also is in wherever/whatever lies beyond. It has been used for many different things -- a home, an asylum and a care home. The people who "live" in this building will be changed and some will never leave.

In this anthology, the editor has chosen stories that are unsettling, and grotesque yet beautiful at times. It is creepy. Even though the stories are all different, they have the building being their common thread and horror. It is a very worthwhile book to read. Don't miss it! The horror is unique.

I wanted, really, really wanted to like this book. The idea of the history of one place, all combined.

While some of the stories 'featured' the house, other stories just mentioned it in passing.

Maybe I wanted something more, something that gave the house a voice.

I received this ARC from Netgalley. Thanks, Netgalley!

One house, five hauntings, five chilling stories.

Oh the Blurbs. Why do they lie? I promised myself this would be the year of the DNF and I am failing quite spectacularly at that promise. The problem is story collections. I may never read another one again. Story collections are the bane of my reading life this month. I can’t DNF them because I fear that if I do so, I’ll miss out something mind-blowing. This one has two good stories that are chilling and set in a haunted house. The other three? I haven’t a clue how they found their way into this collection.

Maggots by Nina Allan

Maggots started out interesting enough but it soon went off the rails for me. A young college student suspects something is off with his beloved aunt after she goes missing for a brief moment while on vacation. He begins to obsess over thoughts that her body has been inhabited by another. . . Sounds good right? And it was at first but then it got terribly dull. It devolved into his search for the truth. That search leads him to Irongrove Lodge, which isn't haunted in the typical way, ugh, and then he discovers some cosmic weirdness. This kind of story just wasn’t what I was expecting from the blurbage. I didn’t find it chilling or haunting. 3 Stars

Priest’s Hole by K.J. Parker

After my disappointment with story #1, I will admit to skimming Priest’s Hole almost immediately once I realized it too was not about a haunted house but about a shape-shifter instead. If I wanted to read the daily goings-on and meanderings of a day in the life of a shape-shifter I would’ve picked up another book. A sexier book, if truth be told. What on earth is going on here?! I cannot rate this one because I only read enough of it to realize it wasn’t the story I was looking for and I moved on to the next. DNF

It was here that I nearly DNF’d the entire book but figured I’d give it one more shot and I’m glad I did.

Yep, that was not a typo. I’m glad I did!

Gnaw by Tade Thompson

The perfect little family moves into Irongrove Lodge and the husband begins to renovate. Uh oh! You know that is never a good idea! His wife has reservations about the whole thing but the husband does what he wants. This story is a slow, slow burn but boy does it ever start to pay off in the final act. The son starts acting strangely and then the wife starts seeing extremely unsettling visions. I absolutely adored this story. The atmosphere, the creeping dread, the horrific images it has burned into my brain? It’s all awesome and it is the reason I am so glad I did not DNF this book! This was the kind of story I was hoping for when I requested this ARC from Netgalley. It’s a shame they weren’t all written in this vein. 4.5 Stars

The Best Story I can Manage Under the Circumstances Robert Shearman

This is story would fit right in if this were a bizarro collection but this was not marketed as a bizarro collection. So, what we have here is a baby born with only a head. It has no legs, no arms, no torso, no nothing besides the head but it’s alive. Alright. But don’t you worry, soon after another baby is born with just a torso and a little peepee and the two baby parts find each other, hook up and match perfectly. Now what are the odds? Then things switch over to a boy and a strange little door that appears only on his birthday. Was it the same baby boy now fully whole? Don’t ask me because I was skimming at this point. I honestly couldn’t comprehend what was going on here and found it all just a strange jumble of words. Eventually I threw in the towel and DNF’d it. This was not at all what I wanted when I picked up this book.

Skin Deep Sarah Lotz

The collection ends on a good note, at least. Skin Deep is about an older woman who purchases Irongrove Lodge for her boy toy. It's clear a terrible thing happened when the story begins and it is slowly revealed how she earned the nickname “The Butcher”.

This was told from many POV’s which kept things lively and kept me guessing. It was dark with slowly creeping dread and as a bonus I got to watch a slow descent into madness. Great stuff and another 4.5 star story that’s worth a read.

It’s a shame 3 out of these 5 stories felt like they belonged in another collection.

This is a collection of linked stories with, unusually, no weak links; although the stand out tale is, for me, Srah Lotz's.

Five Stories High by k j Parker is a horror and general fiction (adult) read.

One house, five hauntings, five chilling stories.

Five Stories High is a collection of five novellas each set in the same house – Irongrove Lodge. This five storey Georgian mansion, once a grand detached property, has now been split into five apartments. This is a building with history, the very bricks and grounds imbued with the pasts of those who have walked these corridors, lived in these rooms.
OMG. Fantastic read with brilliant characters. Do not read alone. Give me the chills. Highly recommended. 5*. I voluntarily reviewed an advanced copy of this book from netgalley.

NOPE. I'm that kind of person that always finishes a book, no matter what. This is the first time i DNF a book. I know it might be unfair for the other authors on this anthology, but the first two tales were so painful and boring to read, that I got upset. I was hoping for classic horror-haunted house stuff and got speculative, weird fantasy. Definetely not for me. I've heard the last story is really great though, so maybe one day I'll pick it up again.

5 stories by 5 different authors all taking place in 1 house. Cool, hey? Not really.

Ok two of the stories are decent, ill say that, but the other three have terrible pacing issues and are quite frankly boring and not to my taste at all.

Not a fan.

Thanks netgalley for an advanced copy.