Rating: 
Summary: Best Short Story collection in YEARS
Review: Little has been my favorite author for years, and this collection of his early works shows why. Very few people can make such odd things as macaroni and cheese and pillow cases seem horrifying, yet Little does. The man is a genius, and hands down the best horror writer in the field today. MUST READING for all horror fans. Truly original stuff here. This leaves the recent crop of horror anthologies in the dust.
Rating:
Summary: Valley Gorge!
Review: Little wastes his time on horror. He's really a comedy writer. And these are his funniest routines. There are a few legitimate horror pieces in Little's oddball "collection," but they pale next to his more plentiful comic gems.The crowning glory is "The Washingtonians," as hilarious a take on Masonic conspiracy theory as you could possibly imagine - and then some. See, there's this secret society that has protected - and continues to practice - George Washington's secret vice: cannibalism! Valley Forge got a mite cold and lean of foodstuffs, so the father of our country ended up eating a few of his soldiers, by which a new secret rite was invented. Any historian unfortunate enough to stumble upon the dread truth incurs the wrath of the secret society bearing our Founding Father's name, who hunt the poor unfortunate down decked out in knee-breeches and 18th century wigs. And if you think they're bad, just wait till you meet the Redcoats... Numerous other hors-d'ouevres on Little's snack plate of macabre levity include such goodies as a comedy of errors involving the hiring of a hit-man by a neighborhood ladies' sewing circle, that is worthy of Monty Python. Don't take my word for it - prove it to yourself. Run, don't walk, to your nearest computer bookseller, and snap-up the funniest helping of twisted humor since The Addams Family. I did, and found myself laughing so hard in a public place that I embarassed myself to death and am writing this review from beyond the grave - where The Collection is a real bestseller, let me tell you!
Rating:
Summary: My new favorite single author collection
Review: little writes my favorite kind of stories. The ones where the "what if" method of generating ideas seems to have been used. And like a good author, he not only asks, but explores the answer. Little fans have been waiting a long time for this collection. He probably knows that, hence the title "The Collection". At 32 stories it's a whopper since most collections only average about a dozen stories. His stories are like the way the critics describe Kings work. Not the style, but the fact that Little turns the mundane upside down. The difference is that little's imagination is far more fierce and little is more to the point, whereas King's aren't usually all that original and his prose seems to wander. It's difficult to discuss short stories without giving them away. Some of my favorites were "The Washingtonians", "The Man In The Passenger Seat", and "The Mailman"(I had never thought of dwarves as scary until I read this.). These 32 stories are scary, creepy, and filled with images and ideas that are going to be etched into my brain for a good long while. I can only hope Little doesn't wait this long to give us another helping.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely the best!
Review: Little's fiction has never appealed to either the pseudointellectual horror crowd or the grue-minded teenage audience. His readership seems to be genuinely literate well-educated adults, and THE COLLECTION proves why. Little's fiction is about ideas. And as both an English grad student and a longtime horror fan, I can safely say that his works are among the few these days that can be legitimately analyzed in an academic setting. He knows how short stories work, and he knows why. In these 32 masterful tales, Little's wild imagination and searing social conscience redefine short fiction for a new generation. Some other readers appear to be confused by the endings of some pieces or to misunderstand their point, but the answers are all there in the text. That is what I admire most about Little. He doesn't spoonfeed or talk down to his audience. He writes to a smart crowd. And I for one appreciate it.
Rating: 
Summary: Hollow
Review: Little's stories have no heart. Horrifying things happen, and he writes very slickly -- if nothing else, this book will pass the time on an airplane trip with its intensely readable prose, and I must give him credit for that. But it left me feeling less scared than just dirty, because the nasty things in these stories don't happen as part of a plot, or a character--they just happen for the sake of being nasty. The sensation could be compared to shoving your hand into a squirming maggot-filled roadkill corpse--whereas a truly good horror story, I think, should be more like watching your parents die. (To overextend a rather awful metaphor...) Cannibalism, rape by the dead, crucifixion, Little pulls out every stop as far as it will go. His method seems to be to create a horrific and insulated setting--a child's home with insane parents, for example, is used more than once. Nasty, cruel, sickening things become the everyday order of things, and while this does give the reader a jolt rather like a punch in the stomach--a feeling of landing in an alien landscape, where everything is wrong--it shouldn't be a writer's only trick. Little shows no sign that he can write a horror story set in the real world--the world the reader actually inhabits. The characters, furthermore, have no motivation(with a rare few exceptions, notably the detective in "Bumblebee" and "Maya's Mother")--they are simply insane and/or compelled by supernatural forces. Watching an insane person do horrible things is horrifying, indeed, but real accomplished horror is watching--and *understanding*--a sane person do those horrible things. It's the difference between a zoo exhibit and a mirror. The stories in "The Collection" are elegantly hideous, but there's nothing beneath the surface. Little's work stires revulsion but the characters are all utterly interchangeable, and so it's impossible to really *care* on a level deeper than the visceral recoil from something disgusting.
Rating: 
Summary: Good intro to the author...
Review: My main problem with these short stories, are they're too short!
Many of the stories enclosed in this volume grab the reader and make them want more... only to turn the page and find the ending.
Sure, an explanation of when the story was written, how Mr. Little came about the story, what publication he wrote the story for precedes every one... I still hoped for more in the body. This collection reaally introduced me to the author's style of writing, and since I've read this I've gone out and bought some of Mr. Little's other novels. Now, Mr. Little rates among the top of my favorite author list!!
Rating:
Summary: Twisted
Review: Ok, after the first story, "The Sanctuary", I was ready to put this away, not that it didn't entertain me, but because I found it to be immature, and I was beggining to take Little as another Deveroux. Well, I am sure glad that I continued. There are some brilliant pieces in here. Short stories are not easy to write, but Little has truly mastered the art. "The Washingtonians", "Estoppel" and "Bob" to name just a few are exactly what I want from a short story- characters who seem real after one paragraph, a seductive plot, suspense, emotion, originality, well constructed sentences and entertainment. My advice is to read at least the first five stories, if you still find it dispicable, then I'm a bonehead, and my reviews are to be avoided at all costs. If you find yourself drawn in and captivated, then you are in for a ride on one of the most twisted and macabre imaginations that was smart enough to put it's works down on paper and get published.
Rating:
Summary: Dalian Dreamscapes
Review: Over the last few years I've read several of Bentley Little's novels and have liked them all. The phrase "the horror-field's Bruce Springsteen" comes to mind -- horror that is so moving and eloquent precisely because it deals with ordinary people embedded in an extraordinary, incomprehensible, and often deadly situations, "strangers and afraid in a world they never made" which, however, many of his characters nevertheless manage, with grace and courage, to survive and even transcend. It is easy for just about anyone to identify with many of his characters -- and thus to enter into their situations and experience the horror with them. So of course when Little's THE COLLECTION came out this year, I rushed to read it. I was delighted by it, but for very different reasons: the short stories and vignettes included in it take place in the landscapes of lucid dreams, terrifying nightmares, and paralyzing night-terrors -- the sort of landscapes only Salvador Dali could have done justice to. These stories make clear that beneath the surface of all us ordinary grunts in our ordinary world are truly extraordinary creatures waiting only for sleep to release them into the fantastic worlds of dream to which they are far better suited to live out their epic adventures and gain their prophetic visions of reality. In our dreams and nightmares we are most truly what we are, and what we truly are are the sons and daughters of the Collective Unconscious, of Magick and monstrousness, horror and heaven, and via his stories in THE COLLECTION Bentley Little has let our daylight, conscious minds into that realm to learn what we are when all the masks of mundanity and the ordinary are stripped away from us.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: The best short story collection I've read in years. Scary, funny, thought-provoking. Everything mainstream horror used to be but is no longer. I have seen the future of horor and its name is Bentley Little
Rating:
Summary: Macabre Anthology
Review: The Collection is an anthology of short stories written by Bentley Little. Each opens with a brief introduction detailing where the idea for it came from. As a writer, I found this a fascinating look into the mind of one of Horror's big guns. He finds stories in the slightest occurrences. All writers wish they could be so prolific! Little leaves his readers to make connections at the end of each piece to make connections of their own. I think this adds to the stories's intrigue. They are disturbing, demented and twisted, just the cup of poison Horror Aficionados desire! Below are some of the scarelights: "The Sanctuary": rampant religious devotion twists the mind "The Washingtonians": the facts of American history are government controlled "Life With Father": recycling carried into the Twilight Zone "Estoppel": a man has to control his speech or the world around him and his role in it changes "The Idol": James Dean still gets the girls "The Pond": environmentalist becomes what he fears most and goes off the deep end "Roommates": desperation makes for some strange bedfellows "The Show": Come one! Come all! See someone snuffed LIVE at The Show! "Pillow Talk": Erotic Fleece "Maya's Mother": Be careful whose daughter you mess with! "Colony": Winning the American Revolution was a publicity stunt, forcing the US presidents to go along with the lie! Tea anyone? "Confessions of a Corporate Man": Inter-Office Wars carried to the extreme
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