I really enjoyed this! My favorite stories in this collection are The Dark Man By Referral, Retail Therapy, and The Secondhand Bookshop Of Al Hazred. All of these stories are entertaining and unique. I would recommend this!
Special Thank You to Chuck McKenzie,Daft Notions and NetGalley for allowing me to read a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely loved this collection of horror short stories. Some of them were very dark, while some were humorous. There were some regular sized stories with very short ones. I'm not always a fan of very short stories, but I found one of them so clever I keeping thinking about it. I also really loved that the subjects were different. This is a collection that felt like it grew over time and the tone changed as the author did. In the end, he does talk about the background to writing the stories and provide some personal information. Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this.

A very, very enjoyable collection of short stories - some extremely short and some longer. All adult as the genre would suggest.

It opens with The Dark Man, By Referral, where our protagonist sees a mysterious man purveying 'Orrible 'Airy Spiders. He isn't selling them, just giving them to referred people. The spider turns out to be the answer to abused and mistreated kids' needs. They return it after the problem is dealth with and refer to someone else. WHAT A STORY. I adored this so much and it set the tone for the rest of this entertaining and wonderfully challenging collection.

I often skip some stories in anthologies/collections. I didn't skip a single one in this book and that's a testement to the skill of Chuck McKenzie, and his weaving ways of woe and waywardness.

If you love horror, don't mind a bit of fruity language and want a read you can rampage through, then get this book in your hands ASAP.

Short story collections are tough, treading ground between cliché and avant-garde. "The Dark Man, By Referral" has it's highs and lows, but it manages to never wander too far toward either extreme. The stories are surprisingly fresh while avoiding experimental gimmicks that might alienate the reader who just wants to enjoy a good yarn. The stories are less horror than explorations of different ideas. For instance, one story is a play on the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, imagining what happened the day after. Another story is the story of one man's personal hell in customer service. Although the collection is billed as horror, there's very little of the truly horrifying, and that's not a knock against the collection. The stories' charm doesn't rely on terrifying the reader.

The Dark Man, By Referral and Less Pleasant Tales is a wickedly creative collection of horror that takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the macabre. From a reimagined boogeyman to cosmic horrors lurking in small-town shadows, each tale leaves a distinct chill. The blend of Lovecraftian vibes, psychological scares, and unexpected twists made this an unforgettable read for me. I especially loved how the stories toyed with my expectations and left me pondering long after I turned the last page. If you’re a fan of unsettling tales that blur the line between monster and man, this is your next great read.

Hold onto your eyeballs, people—The Dark Man is one wild, creepy, bone-chilling ride! This book’s got it all: boogeymen, zombies, aliens, and even a snack-happy kaiju. (Yeah, a freaking kaiju!) I couldn’t stop flipping the pages, even when I wanted to hide under a blanket. The author doesn’t just spook you; he sucker punches your brain with “what the heck just happened?!” moments. Wanna lose some sleep and question your grip on reality? Grab this book ASAP. You’ll love every spooky second. 👻📚

This book collects 20 of Chuck McKenzie's short horror stories written over more than two decades. It includes several examples of flash fiction, which were OK - flash fiction is what it is, and it's not one of my favorite forms of writing. There were several humorous tales, including two Lovecraftian ones, both of which I mostly cared for the Lovecraft details more so than the light-hearted ones. The two stories that stood out for me were the title one and "Tagged." None of them were bad, and the writing itself is fairly good, and overall the book is reasonably entertaining.

The Dark Man, By Referral is an interesting collection of horror short stories, with varying different focuses, such as zombies, strange creatures and medical horror

I really enjoyed The Dark Man, By Referral, as the first story in the book, it was an interesting concept, and whilst sticking to the horror theme, had a bittersweet meaning behind the story. I especially enjoyed the incredibly short stories, that were around a small paragraph in length, they felt like the sort of stories you would tell at a sleepover as a child in attempt to terrify your friends.

Despite this, there were a few issues I experienced with the book. Firstly, I wasn’t particularly comfortable with some of the language used in the story, as frankly it seemed unnecessary. Reading the story without the addition of this language would in my opinion not take away any value from the story.

As well as this, some stories felt more complete than others. Often the slightly longer short stories felt like they were really the first chapter of a book, opposed to a standalone story, as some horror elements felt missing, and instead of getting to the nitty gritty of repulsive descriptions as some short horror stories do, ended on a rather disappointing cliffhanger.

My final issue, which may attribute to being personal, was I struggled to place the timeline in some stories until specifics were mentioned, but that meant I often had to restart the short story to get a full understanding of what was going on, I feel like if the time setting was made initially clearer in some stories, it would get less jumbled. For example, in the The Dark Man, by Referral, it wasn’t until covid and google are mentioned that i understood this was set in modern day, the descriptions and my personal understanding led me to believe the story was set in the early to mid 90’s or earlier.

Overall, I would say this story is valid for 3 stars, I enjoyed some stories more than others, which is typical in a collection of short stories, and I enjoyed the explanations about the story we had from Chuck McKenzie at the end of the book.