I don’t know how the stories for this collection were gathered to keep the descriptions of the town and some recurring characters consistent, but it certainly keeps the book moving. It is rather like watching a television series about a spooky place. Readers get to know these recurring characters better through each story. A couple of the lot were a bit disturbing, but all-in-all they were mostly uplifting stories that could stand alone without being part of the Aleatory universe.

In some of the stories, the turn outside of town leads back in time. In others, the rutted road leads to self-revelations about the characters and their loved ones. In still others, it leads to something truly horrific. There are witches, fortunetellers, ghosts, and enough guilty pasts to keep any reader interested.

A few inconsistencies in the later stories in the collection veered from what had been established in the stories that came before. One in particular was the Tombstone Tree. It was described as a jutting finger of limestone bounding a quarry that supplied the stone for grave markers in a story by that name. In another story, the Tombstone Tree was a real tree on the edge of a cemetery.

Despite those minor flaws, I was very entertained by Aleatory Junction and hope there might be a sequel to this book or another fine collection by these great writers.