"Reality and other stories" by John Lanchester

An audio book.

• Signal - the narrator takes his family (wife plus 2 young kids) to stay with a rich friend whose house is full of mod-cons but lacks good phone reception. A mysterious, very tall man takes an interest in the children. When the husband guards the child one night he sees the man enter their room. His eyes are without pupils and irises. He points his phone at each child in turn, shaking his head. Turns out that he's the ghost of the previous occupier. Maybe the best in the book.
• Coffin Liquor - An economics conference attendee (it's in Romania), a rationalist, does a tourist trip, finds out about a local villian who cut people's tongues out. He listens to Dickens instead of the boring lecture feed through headphones. But it has a spooky section that he doesn't recall. Next day he listens to Dawkins' "The God Delusion" which is full-on scary. A Hacker? A psychology experiment by the organisers? A joke? He goes mad and has to be transported back to England for protracted treatment.
• Which of these would you like? - a prisoner is asked by friendly guards to choose (it's multiple choice - we get a description of the options) a cloak, a mask, a scaffold, a grave. This happens each day. He doesn't always choose the same options. The prisoner asks why he is there - what has he done wrong? The prisoner knows that one day he'll be led from his cell to the scaffold, but not today.
• We happy few - lecturers in a cafe discuss the "brain in a vat" thought experiment and how people react to it. They discuss social media. One of them suggests that all philosophers are trolls, and that Socrates would have liked the comments section. They cyberstalk students to see what they really think about lecturers. Social Media is a way for second-rate minds to waste their lives - a trick. Maybe reality is a computer simulation designed to test this. The second-rate minds in the cafe begin to disappear.
• Reality - she's the first to arrive at the villa of a reality show. Others arrive, but nothing happens - the tests and evictions never start. But she's careful to give the right impression to the cameras. Is this life? The weakest piece.
• Cold call - Wife/mother deals with father-in-law's calls because her husband is often away filming. When her husband returns by surprise, early, they rent a hotel room for an afternoon. She turns off her phone. The father dies that afternoon, having tried to get in touch. After that, there are mysterious calls, one from a kid's toy phone.
• The Kit - An unspecified household utility has broken down so the farmer father with 4 sons makes the meals, etc. He orders a new version, letting the youngest son do the assembly, hoping that he won't bungle it and be made fun of by his brothers. "Hello Mum" he says, when it's made. I'd been hoping for a twist to that expected ending. Maybe weaker than Reality.
• Charity - A retired male teacher looks after a charity shop. Donators are bereaved or declutters. Customers are often fashion-conscious kids looking for mis-priced bargains. A selfie-stick is donated, bought in the Congo. A girl buys it. Her friend later comes in saying the girl is ill and asks if he can help. The stick seems to make photos come out the way the user wants. He recovers the stick, uses it on himself and sees a horrifying skull - his own.

As others have pointed out, they're like Black Mirror, Twilight Zone, Tales of the Unxpected - all well written with touching, telling character details.

Other reviews

• Christopher Shrimpton
• Michael Shaub (Not every story succeeds at the same level — "The Kit" ... has a twist ending that's hard not to see coming from a mile away. Still, it's written well, and marked with Lanchester's dry wit.)
• Blair Rose (The eight tales are billed as “very modern ghost stories” with a focus on contemporary technology. Yet while the stories in Reality may concern themselves with the technological accoutrements of our 21st-century lives, the overall effect often skews closer to the comfortable traditionalism of classic ghost stories. ... “We Happy Few” depicts a group of pretentious friends whose conversation has all the depth of your average Twitter spat, and I was happy to leave them behind at its end. Meanwhile, “The Kit” vaguely recalls the more domestic of Robert Aickman’s stories, particularly “Growing Boys”, but is undermined by the fact that its twist is clearly apparent from the beginning.)
• Ross Jeffery (this book may have delivered on the cover but it didn’t on the scares, or the uncanny or anything chill worthy… I could have read this book sopping wet and in a draft, and still not have got any chills, just a case of mild annoyance. ... Lanchester resorts to the same techniques in the majority of these stories. He pulls the reader in (tight and engaging prose), then, more often than not drops the twist or inserts the horror right at the end. Due to his constant use of this tool, you know somethings coming, and so the whole story loses its impact and power, in a number of these stories you would half expect Lanchester to say BOO at the end. ... Which of These Would You Like? Now this story I really enjoyed ... The Kit – again the twist comes at the end and I also found this story quite forgettable. ... Charity – I’d possibly say it’s the best story in the collection, because it’s the only one with a tiny bit of unease and dread in it.)