By J. M. Lassen
Night Shade Books, $12.99, 296 pages

A young man learns the truth of the family business from his older brother. A boy tries to retrieve the poems he left in his girlfriend’s coffin. A devoted Viking woman finds herself entombed with her slain warrior husband. A man impersonates a ravenous zombie in order to rescue the girl he loves. A kid leads a monstrous army against the surviving humans. A woman loses her family just before the undead begin to rise. Two brothers on a sailboat confront laughing zombies and the worst of humanity alike.

Z: Zombie Stories strives to collect the best of the overwrought zombie short-story genre, and, admirably, editor Lassen succeeds. Several of the new classics of zombie lit open this collection. In fact, it wasn’t until the fourth story that I encountered a tale I hadn’t read in a previous best-of series.

Every story in the collection leans toward the darker side of the zombie apocalypse scenario, mostly varying thematically. Some are dominated by melancholy, others by horror, still others by the struggle to survive. Each haunts the reader in its own way.

If I had to introduce someone to the zombie-centric subgenre of fiction, Z: Zombie Stories would be a great gateway book.

Reviewed by Glenn Dallas