Looking for Jake by China Mieville

This collection of short stories showcases what Mieville does best. He finds the eeriness in the everyday, the morbidity of the mundane, the creepiness in the corners of regular life. Fans of his Bas Lag novels (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council) will be pleased to see a short tale regarding the fate of renegade fReemade Jack Half-a-Prayer.
Two of the stories feature Mieville himself, chasing down the theory of Feral Fairy Roads in "Report of Certain Events in London" and watching a Hacker become involved in a New World Order conspiracy in "An End to Hunger". His vampire novella "The Tain" presents a new theory for the denizens of the dark, stalking the other side of our mirrors.
My favorites were "The Ball Room", a horror story on par with The Grudge, featuring evil child ghosts and Ikea(!). In "'Tis the Season", a rare gift of a humorous short story: what happens when Christmas gets WAY too corporate? The holiday is trademarked, and the holding company protects its properties viciously."Familiar" is a great way for new Mieville readers to familiarize themselves with his horrific eye for detail. A witch's familiar (kind of a gooey ball of human fat, muscle, and other fluids) becomes sentient and begins absorbing the world around it.
While some stories are more subtle in their scope, the book is solid form start to finish, a rare feat for any collection.