I'm not one for old movies and I've never seen The Horror Express, but I really enjoyed this snippets. Intriguing, chilling, and thought provoking.

I received this ARC from Atria/Emily Bestler Books and NetGalley in return for a fair and honest review.

Night and Day is a collection of nine short stories that blend crime and supernatural elements, and a monogram of the film Horror Express starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Telly Savalas. The stories themselves are entertaining and thought provoking with Abelman’s Line and Our Friend Carlton, for me, being stand outs. The concluding half of the book is the authors monogram on Horror Express which for me was entertaining and interesting. If Connolly decided to write a biography on Lee or Cushing I would definitely buy it. I highly recommend this book and look forward to the author’s future books.

"New York Times bestselling author John Connolly, "one of the best thriller writers we have" (Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author), returns with a shivery collection of supernatural tales.

Filled with eerie surprises and dark delights, Night and Day takes us from the dusty shelves of an uncanny library filled with fictional characters to a bunker deep beneath the earth where scientists seek revenge on old Nazis; from an English marsh haunted by a mother and her son to a country house where a grieving widower finds comfort from a most unlikely source. Concluding with the author's account of how an obscure horror film brought him closer to his lost father, and how nostalgia can help to keep us sane, this is a collection that will move, entertain, and keep you reading late into the night."

I love the vintage vibe I'm getting from the cover, very Edward Gorey.

Up until Night and Day, I’ve always believed, perhaps naively, that John Connolly could do no wrong. I’ve read just about everything the man has written, including all his Charlie Parker novels. And now my belief has been shattered to some degree.

I have mixed feelings about Night and Day. Its first half is a collection of stories that pretty much are uniformly excellent. For me, there are two standouts, Abelman’s Line (an interesting take on how war criminals get what’s coming to them), and The Bear. The second half is where, for this reader, the book fell apart. I knew going into the book that there was a section where the author writes about how an old horror movie helped him connect to his deceased father, I had no idea that it comprised the last HALF of the book. It’s a long and detailed look at his past, nostalgia, the careers of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and other philosophical musings. It reads like a thesis, and its presence in the book for me was quite jarring. I really, really tried to finish Horror Express, but after many attempts at staying awake, I gave up and DNF’d at 75%.

Overall, three stars for this collection. The stories alone get five stars.

My thanks to the publisher and to Netgalley for providing an ARC of the book.

John Connolly has such an interesting mind! I'd love to see him and Roal Dahl sit and swap stories. These were delightful and strange. I especially loved the illustration of the bear in a tie.

One of my favorite books is by Connolly and everything of his I've read, I've enjoyed. And for the most part, this book was the same. However, half of the book was an essay that was incredibly drawn out and, I hate to say, boring. So boring that I did stop reading at about 65% of the book.

Now the first half of the book is great. There's 9 shorter stories that are all a little odd but so good! There's 2 stories about a very interesting library. Some stories were a little spooky, some a little sad. One that was on the longer side, Abelman's Line, got a little wordy with a lot of history and science but was still pretty satisfying. I feel like it could've been it's own book with as much backstory and history that it could have. But my favorite of the stories was the last one, Our Friend Carlton. I don't want to spoil it but it was even a bit funny. I honestly want to talk about each of the stories but it would be so hard to and not spoil them. Most of them had an O Henry feel to them, or Bentley Little, not exactly a big twist but more of an ah-ha moment.

I wish I could give this book a higher rating, I would have loved a second half filled with more short stories instead of an essay that was more personal experience about a very obscure movie.

John Connolly is revered for his novels and his shorter works seem to fade into the background. His stories don’t show up in year’s best anthologies of dark fiction. This is sad. He’s a master of the ghostly tale and it’s on display in this, his latest collection. These stories can stand up to the likes of Aickmann and any of the old masters. If you love ghost stories don’t pass on this one. The essay that forms the second half of the book is equally engaging and entertaining as the fiction. Highly Recommended.

This is an odd one. We’ve got nine short stories and then the author’s honor’s thesis which takes up a full half of the book.

First the stories. As always with a batch of stories this was a mixed bag, but there were a couple I thought were strong, including one that relates a surprising encounter with a bear called, “The Bear,” and another that recounts a new way to deal with war criminals in “Abelman’s Line.”

Now for the weirdness, the author’s four part dissertation on a B-horror movie he saw as a lad, “Horror Express” (1972). This is a deep, deep, DEEP dive into the movie’s themes, the full careers of the stars and the studios involved and the whys, whens and hows of its importance to him. And then, after the first two sections, he wants you to watch the movie before reading the last two sections.

Fellow readers, I did it. I am that girl. I plowed my way through those first two sections, at times propping my eyelids open at noon, and then my sucker self paid ACTUAL U.S. DOLLARS ($1.99) to download the movie on YouTube and I watched before I read the last two section. I will give you a moment for you to applaud/laugh at me in your head. Thank you.

The movie? Well, to quote critic Tom Milne, “as bad horror films go….it isn’t all that bad.” I have certainly seen worse. Now, don’t get Tom and me wrong, it was bad, but it could have been much worse. It stars Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas who is chewing scenery and almost visibly spitting it out. I won’t spoil it more than that.

I honestly don’t know what to say about the book. If you are curious, read it. If you don’t stop for the film it won’t take more than a few hours.

This collection features nine short stories plus an extensive essay on an old horror film that also holds something personal to Connolly. Most of the short stories take place in different time periods in the past. The majority of those are ghostly tales, with two, what I believe fall under magical realism, taking place in the author's creation the Caxton Library. One exception is more of a speculative work about slightly futuristic Nazi hunters using special technology to go about their business. While I have found Connolly's earlier collected short stories to be some of his most average writing (as opposed to his novels which I think are mostly superb) those in this book were mostly much better examples of his writing, though distinctly different from his novels. The latter nearly half of the book examines in depth the mostly forgotten, or at best cult classic, 1972 film Horror Express. While I understand there is some personal nostalgia surrounding the film which made him write about it, there was just some mind-numbing, very unnecessary details and historical tangent that were equally unwarranted to tell what he wanted about the film. The short stories were mostly quite enjoyable while the dissertation on Horror Express, biographies of its stars and director aside, dragged the book down. 3.5 rounded to 4*

I received this book as an ARC from Atria Books eGalley and NetGalley. While I am a huge fan of Connolly’s novels, I didn’t have much experience with his short story or essay writing. What a revelation!!! The short stories were extremely well written, and i found them engaging, humorous, and creepy. The essay was likewise excellent. As much as I do NOT want him to return to journalism (more Charlie Parker and Caxton Library, please), Connolly is a fantastic journalist and storyteller. I highly recommend this work!

Okay, so first things first: When the blurb says that this collection of stories “conclud[es] with the author's account of how an obscure horror film brought him closer to his lost father,” we're literally talking about the entire second half of the book. The first half is short stories, the second half is a meandering nonfiction piece about a horror film that probably 98% of the people who will read this book have never seen. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I suppose, unless what you're hoping for is an entire book of Connolly's short stories (which are always fantastic).

And the short stories in Night and Day are indeed fantastic. They're sometimes spooky and sometimes funny, and they're always entertaining. There are two stories that revolve around the Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository, which is a very special sort of library. There are also monsters and bears and ghosts, and as someone who often doesn't really “get” short stories, I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed all of them (except I guess I'm also not really surprised, because I am a John Connolly fangirl).

The monograph about the obscure horror film Horror Express, however? Meh. It's fine, although I only made it about halfway through Part 2 before I started skimming a little … or, okay, maybe a lot. There's talk about Connolly's father and trains and airplanes and the people responsible for creating the film, and it's all decently interesting. It's obvious that Horror Express means a lot to the author. However, I have to confess that I would have much rather had another nine short stories instead. Sorry, John. If it's any consolation, The Book of Lost Things is still one of my top three favorite novels of all time.

So, yeah. If I were asked to write a TL;DR for this review, it'd probably go something like “great stories, too much nonfiction.” The stories are really well-written, however, and if you've enjoyed Connolly's previous story collections, you'll likely enjoy this one too. Just don't expect an entire book of short fiction, because that's definitely not what you're getting here.

My overall rating: Four stars - five shiny stars for the first half and three for the lengthy (and somewhat less entertaining) conclusion.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Atria/Emily Bestler Books for providing me with an advance copy of this book to review. Its expected publication date is October 22, 2024.

The first half of the book is short stories, they are all different and very interesting. The second half of the book is the author’s thoughts and ideas about writing a movie. It goes very in depth into writing a movie, which is interesting if you are passionate about the topic, but for me it felt a bit too much. Overall I did enjoy this book.

I love short stories and finding a book of short stories written by an author you love is just magical. These did not disappoint and I did find myself having to stop reading some at night because they gave me such chills! Definitely recommend to anyone who loves this author. Also I need a whole tv series about the first story! Or at least a full novel. Thank you netgalley for the ARC!

Creepy, dark academia is the most apt description I can think of for this book. There is so much variety in the stories I think any reader can find one with which they connect love. I personally enjoyed “And All The Graves of All the Ghosts” and can’t stop thinking about it.

This was a beautifully done collection of supernatural tales, it was everything that I wanted from this collection. I enjoyed that there were different types of stories being told with the supernatural tales. I really enjoyed the way John Connolly wrote this and left me wanting more.