Publication Date: November 18th, 2025
Paperback. 592 pages.
This collection of unforgettable and uncanny stories could only come from the mind of award winner Neal Shusterman. Compiled for the first time in one epic volume, these stories both classic and brand-new will stretch your imagination from terror to the sublime and back again. Explore a world where bats block out the sun, where soup is a trap for your soul, or where the life-force of a glacier can bring back the dead. Journey to a place where the wind can be captured, time can be crafted into infinite attic space, or a hot tub can house an ancient monster. And revisit the Arc of the Scythe universe for two all-new tales of gleaning.
In this collection, the only thing that is truly certain is nothing is certain."
MindWorks is a diverse collection of short fiction that explores the many different strange spaces of the mind, including ideas around memory, identity, perception, sanity, and so much more. Shusterman balances a YA-style psychological horror with twists, big ideas, and plenty to explore. There are a lot of stories packed in here, so I think there's a little something for everyone.
What I liked: Neal Shusterman absolutely never lacks in imagination and creativity, and those are all on view in this collection. I appreciated that the stories were categorized by theme throughout, as I think it made the entire collection feel more cohesive and allowed readers to play with certain ideas all in one go rather than moving around to different topics constantly. Shusterman excels at creating strong atmosphere in all his stories, regardless of the plot or concept, and I love how eerie and off-kilter so many of the stories feel. It all feels very trademark Shusterman, so if you already like his work then you'll probably enjoy this one as well. I also found these stories very easy to get through in the sense that the pacing was pretty consistently faster paced in most of them, so despite it being a larger book, it's not a difficult one to get through.
What I didn't like: A lot of these stories lacked that extra little something special to make any of them really stand out to me. I found myself thinking many of these just felt a little familiar or not really hitting in the way I would expect them to. Some felt a bit abrupt or heavy-handed, and seemed to rely more on the concept than the actually narrative storytelling. They also had slightly inconsistent emotional depth, where some hit really hard, and others really didn't make me feel much at all. That being said, that's really common in short story collections for me, so I wouldn't say that's especially unique here. I really just got a sense of repetition throughout these stories that left me feeling more average about this collection than overly excited, as I'd hoped to be.
Overall, this is a very solid collection of SFF short stories and are a great collection from the incredible Neal Shusterman. While it's not a collection that will necessarily become a new favorite for me, it's still one with plenty of great stories and will appeal to many readers, including both new and old Shusterman fans.
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