Two brand new tales anchor this wide-ranging collection from one of urban fantasy’s most successful authors. Here is the first time that best-selling fantasy, YA, and crime author Kelley Armstrong has had her stories collected from Otherworld and beyond. With her signature twists and turns, Armstrong gives a fresh spin on city-dwelling vampires, werewolves, and zombies, while also traveling further afield, to a post-apocalyptic fortress, a superstitious village, a supernatural brothel, and even to feudal Japan.

With tales that range from humorous to heart-stopping, these are the stories that showcase Kelley Armstrong at her versatile best.

– Rakshashi (standalone)
– Kat (Darkest Powers universe, non-series narrator)
– A Haunted House of Her Own (standalone)
– Learning Curve (Otherworld universe, Zoe)
– The Screams of Dragons (Cainsville universe, non-series narrator)
– The Kitsune’s Nine Tales (Age of Legends universe, non-series narrator)
– Last Stand (standalone)
– Bamboozled (Otherworld universe, non-series narrator)
– Branded (Otherworld universe, non-series narrator)
– The List (Otherworld universe, Zoe)
– Young Bloods (Otherworld universe, non-series narrator)
– The Door (standalone, original to this collection)
– Dead Flowers by a Roadside (standalone)
– Suffer the Children (standalone)
– The Collector (standalone)
– Gabriel’s Gargoyles (Cainsville universe, Gabriel)
– Harbinger (standalone)
– V Plates (Otherworld universe, Nick)
– Life Sentence (Otherworld universe, non-series narrator)
– Plan B (standalone)
– The Hunt (Cainsville universe, non-series narrator)
– Dead to Me (standalone)
– Devil May Care (Cainsville universe, Patrick, original to this collection)

So… I’m a fan of Kelley Armstrong’s work. I’ve read two of her series and have found that I am really fond of her standalone short stories. I’ll be honest, I didn’t read several of these short stories. Not because they weren’t great. I’m sure they are. But they were from series I have never read and therefore I wouldn’t understand the references. As for the Darkest Powers and Otherworld series, I’ve only read the original three books from the Darkest Powers and have never read the next trilogy of that series. So I didn’t read those either, because I would have no way of knowing who or what they were talking about. As for the Otherworld, I only read the last one because it featured characters I actually knew by name. The first two with Zoe, flew right over my head. I don’t remember much about the character and with my interest in her being a complete zero, I wasn’t going to focus on those two short stories.

Now, for her standalone short stories. Can I just say they were great? Because they were. The ones that stood out for me were Dead to Me, Plan B, Dead Flowers by a Roadside, The Door, and A Haunted House of Her Own. These weren’t particularly long stories and most got to the point quite quickly, but they were well interesting and in a way, showed a disturbed sense of humor in their storytelling that I could really appreciate it. I like stories that go one way and end up in a completely different spot. These were the type of stories that you read and they were so intriguing, you couldn’t help talking about what you had just read.

This is an excellent collection of Kelley Armstrong’s books and though I didn’t read most of the series-related ones, I look forward to seeing more of her standalones in the future. They truly are amazing and she offers such a wide spectrum of fiction, that I don’t think this author really could do any wrong. She could probably write for almost any type of genre and I would enjoy it.

Reviewer’s note: I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Pick up your copy on Amazon: Led Astray: The Best of Kelley Armstrong