Close Encounters of the Urban Kind

I'm usually a little skeptical of anthologies that have fairly narrow themes, as the contents of them tend to get a little repetitive. So I was a little surprised at how much I enjoyed this one (a collection of urban legends being retold as first encounter with alien stories). As with any anthology, there were a few stories I didn't care for, but most of them were really well done and had more variety than I had expected. Bonus points for short sections at the end of each story where the authors explained the urban legend they were working from (a lot of which I'd never heard before, ironically), and how they came about the story, as well as a bit in the introduction where the editor discussed trying to construct a meta-narrative through the order the stories were placed in, which was something I never would have noticed if it weren't pointed out to me but which is a nice touch.