Amaranthine and Other Stories serves up nine schlock horror slices, sprinkled with quirk and humour. Forget vampires. Forget werewolves. Forget ghosts. Humans are the ultimate grotesques. Variant flavours of woe sift through these pages. The results are sometimes hilarious, sometimes outright hair-raising! From time to time I like to dip my toes in the waters of short fiction. Horror always lends itself well to this particular format, so when the latest collection from Erik Hofstatter arrived in my mailbox who was I to refuse? So sit back and relax as we enjoy nine different interpretations of the purest evil. The Birthing Pool – Sean suffers a horrible break up. He becomes obsessed with filling the void that has been left behind. First story in the collection and were already in utterly gross territory. Those with a delicate constitution, beware. This one is proper nasty! You’ll never look at undercooked food in quite the same way again, I can guarantee it. Tristan’s Equation – More obsession, but this time it is a mathematical problem that plagues Tristan’s every waking moment. What does it all mean? Where are his family and why has he been left utterly alone? Amaranthine – How best…