A collection of eleven Urban Fantasy short stories, including:
Jim Butcher’s Cold Case, Molly Carpenter—Harry Dresden’s apprentice-turned-Winter Lady—must collect a tribute from a remote Fae colony and discovers that even if you’re a good girl, sometimes you have to be bad…
Seanan McGuire’s Sleepover finds half-succubus Elsie Harrington kidnapped by a group of desperate teenage boys. Not for anything “weird.” They just need her to rescue a little girl from the boogeyman. No biggie.
In Kevin J. Anderson’s Eye of Newt, Zombie P.I. Dan Shamble’s latest client is a panicky lizard missing an eye who thinks someone wants him dead. But the truth is that someone only wants him for a very special dinner…
In Rob Thurman’s  Impossible Monsters, infernally heroic Caliban Leandros takes a trip down memory lane as he deals wih some overdue—and nightmarish—vengeance involving some quite nasty impossible monsters.

In theory, there are no dusty corners in my digital library where a book can slink out of sight and sulk because I didn’t get around to reading it in the first month after I bought it. In practice, that’s exactly what ‘Shadowed Souls’ managed to do. I bought the book a day after it was published in November 2016. If that sounds eager, it’s because this book has new stories from six authors whose work I follow and each story has its own narrator, And yet, here I am in 2025, stumbling across the book when it shows up in a LibraryThing search for something else.

So, a little late, I brought this out of the shadows, intending to read a story a day. It didn’t work out that way. There’s a new portmanteau word doing the rounds now that describes what happened with this book: Snaccident -{snack-si-dent} – noun– mistakenly eating an entire pack of biscuits when the intent was to eat just one.

In the introduction to this collection, Kerrie Hughes says that she “…invited the authors to write a story that good and evil are just two aspects of a complicated and very human story, I wanted the plots to play with the concept and invite the reader to explore the edges of their own darkness.”

Some of the stories hit the mark perfectly – dark, complex, compelling, tales. A couple, the ones attempting humour, didn’t hold my attention.

I recommend this collection to anyone who enjoys Urban Fantasy that’s thoughtful and packs a punch. I recommend the audiobook. Having a different narrator for each story made this a great listen.

Below I’ve reviewed and rated each story, in the order they appear in the anthology.

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COLD CASE by Jim Butcher ★★★★★

I haven’t read any Jim Butcher since I gave up on the dirge that was ‘Battle Ground‘ in 2021 so it was a joy to slip back to 2016 and remind myself of why I loved the Harry Dresden books. 

The story is about Molly Carpenter, on her first mission for Mab since she became the Maiden Winter Queen. It’s set in the cold and dark in Alaska, which fits a story about a Winter Queen. Molly always was easy to like, especially after she had such a tough time in the Dresden files, so I was glad to get to spend time with her again. At first, this seemed like an upbeat, ‘Molly-To-The-Rescue’ story, with a daring rescue, a spectacular fight scene and an alliance with the nicest (and youngest and most handsome) White Council Ranger. I should have remembered two things: firstly, this anthology is about the complex relationship between good and evil and secondly, Molly is now working on behalf of Mab. The ending took me in an unexpected direction that wasn’t so much a twist as an inevitable outcome that Molly should have seen coming. It was sad and harsh and yet quite probably necessary. This was Jim Butcher at his best. 

SLEEPOVER by Seanan McGuire ★★★★

So far, I’ve only read the first two books in McGurie’s InCryptid series ‘Discount Armageddon‘ and ‘Midnight Blue Light Special‘, I enjoy the way McGuire uses the eccentric cryptozoologist Price family to challenge a humancentric view of the world. Elsinore Harrington, cousin to Verity and Antimony Price, is the protagonist in ‘Sleepover‘ so of course the story starts at a Roller Derby. Then Eisinore has to deal with a kidnapping and the search for a missing child. What I liked most about this story was that Elsinore never makes the obvious choice. She treats people as people, regardless of species, and tries to find a way to de-escalate tense situations. 

IF WISHES WERE by Tanya Huff ★★★★

It was a pleasure to read a new Vicki Nelson from Tanya Huff. It’s been fifteen years since I read Tanya Huff’s ‘Blood‘ series about Vicki Nelson, an ex-cop, forced to retire because of a degenerative eye disease who, working as a PI, found herself in a series of complex encounters with the supernatural. I’ve missed her. 

‘If Wishes Were‘ takes place decades after the books Vicki, of course, hasn’t aged. She’s still thirty-four. Being a vampire will do that for you. Mike, her partner is now in his sixties and still working as a cop. For me, this was a poignant story. I could see that Vicki had grown harder over the years. She’s convinced herself that her relationship with Mike is the only thing keeping her even slightly human, although I could still see the core of the person she used to be. 

The conflict at the story’s heart wasn’t so much how/if Vicki would deal with yet another powerful rogue supernatural but whether she has the strength to live with Mike’s choice to live out his natural lifespan. Tanya Huff showed what a difficult and emotionally complex decision this was. 

SOLUS by Anton Strout DNF

Anton Strout was a new author for me. I’m aware of his Simon Canderous series but I’d never tried it. After sampling this story, I’m sure it’s not a series that would work for me. I gave up on the ‘Solus’ part way through because the writing was so leaden and the attempts at humour were so heavy-handed. 

PEACOCK IN HELL by Kat Richardson ★★★

A well-imagined and gory climb out of hell. A twisted revenge plot. A lot of action. Not a (completely) good guy in sight. An entertaining read but a little short on emotional engagement with the protagonists. 

EYE OF NEWT by Kevin J. Anderson DNF

Nope. Not my sort of thing. This is comic book humour of the sniggering, pun-filled kind that never makes me smile. I set it aside.

WHAT DWELLS WITHIN by Lucy A. Snyder ★★★

Well, that was fun. A kick-ass outlawed-but-still-trying-to-be-good heroine with a complicated past, taking on demonic forces in a spectacular rescue. The storytelling was a little condensed but I liked the main character, Jessie Shimer, so I bought the first book in the series: ‘Spellbent’ (2009) despite its very ‘of its time’ cover. 

HUNTER, HEALER by Jim C. Hines ★★★★★

Jim Hines met the brief to explore the complex duality of good and evil with this powerful story. It was darker and more violent than his usual stories. He conceives of someone doing something fundamentally evil and justifying it by claiming they are saving lives. He sets up a violent conflict where all the choices seem bleak He carried me right to the brink an outcome fueled by despair and bravery. And then he found a way of transforming all of that into something hopeful without diminishing the impact of the evil. This was very well done. 

BAGGAGE by Erik Scott de Bie ★★★★

Another new-to-me author but this time, one writing in a style that I enjoyed. 

This is a first-person narrative from a retired supervillain/superhero in hiding. It’s not easy to paint a picture of a high-functionîng alcoholic with a superpower fed by other people’s fear and still make human enough and vulnerable enough to engage a reader’s empathy. De Bie managed it in style while delivering a plot that kept momentum and delivered a twist that I didn’t see coming.

I’d like to read more about this character, so I’ve added a copy of ‘Libations for the Dead‘ to my TBR.

SALES FORCE by Kristine Kathryn Rusch ★★★

I liked the idea of the central character as someone who can do what she does because she has less soul than most. The possible scam she was investigating was clever and heartless. The ending was satisfying. The start, and most of the passages about grief, didn’t work as well. 

IMPOSSIBLE MONSTERS by Rob Thurman ★★★

This story introduces the monstrous Cal Leandros (think Dexter with a foul mouth and supernatural abilities), the protagonist of Rob Thurman’s ten-book Urban Fantasy series about a half-human bogeyman. The start was a little slow and Cal’s obsession with expletives got very old very quickly but the story gripped me once it got underway. It was dark, with no redeeming features, although Cal wouldn’t lose any sleep about that. I don’t know how well the interior monologue of a depressed, violent, sociopathic main character will translate into a novel, but I’m curious enough to want to give ‘Nightlife‘ (2006) the first Cal Leandros book, a try.