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City Hall

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City Hall

By: Bentley Little
Narrated by: Nicholas Selker
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Summary

Paul Wardlow couldn't be happier after landing his job as an administrative assistant at Arovista city hall. The pay is good, the benefits are great, and he has the opportunity to finally help put some good out into the world. It seems like a dream.
But all is not well in city hall, and it hasn’t been for some time.

Doors open up on hallways that are not listed on any layout. Employees attend meetings and return changed. Strange men come and go, with no record of them being employed there--or even of being alive.

And then there are the whispered rumors of the Corp Yard, where no one is ever seen entering and no one is ever seen leaving, but screams are still heard.

Arovista's local government is preparing for changes. Big changes. For a new plan. A new future. And it will not tolerate interference.

As the saying goes… you can't fight City Hall.

CITY HALL is Bentley Little in his element, a scathing plunge into violence and madness and small scale government that only he could deliver.

©2025 Bentley Little (P)2025 Journalstone Horror Literature & Fiction Satire Government
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Critic reviews

"When it comes to balls-to-the-wall horror, no one does it like Bentley Little."
--STEPHEN KING

"CITY HALL will boil your blood right before chilling it! Bentley Little is more than an entertaining horror author... he's a modern Voltaire!" Judith Sonnet, author of Summer Never Ends
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Good pacing in the storyline..classic Bentley Little story which asks all those questions around City Control: 'What if?...' excellent book, unexpected twist at the end!

Corruption horror!

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Yes I thought it was a good book! And it feels we r living slightly similar times! 🤓 Thank you!

Enjoyed it!

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Haven't really read much Bentley Little, but I enjoyed The Haunted, and the Walking Alone collection of short stories, so was prepared to give this a try, with the intriguing premise of local government in the US mixed in. A smashup of Parks&Rec and Night Vale.

But it's all quite confusing. There are a few core POV characters, and a lot of POV characters who come and go, and a whole chorus of freaks, oddballs, the lonely and the desperate etc. But it all feels so very... disjointed. Which is, I guess, a fair reflection of the atmosphere within the titular City Hall that the author has created. But it makes the act of reading itself very disorienting for the reader. Some of the setpieces are excellent, Little has a gift for description of the weird and wonderful, when he pauses long enough to indulge.

ymmv. It took me a long time to finish this, the stop-start nature of the prose stringing it out for a long awkward time.

Very odd, disjointed collection of weird moments

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It starts off well, and I thought that I made a good choice, As I went along however, the story didnt develop at all, it becomes increasingly farfetched and it totally lost my attention. The ending was so dull, I thought I must have fallen asleep and missed it, so I replayed the last 2 chapters twice, and sadly it was still a big fat yawn.

Not worth a credit

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