Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Dark Chronicles, via Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources
Blurb
Careful what you wish for. In Dark Chronicles, wishes have teeth.
Ten speculative tales brimming with twisted humour and delicious menace: a pepper that lets you in on other people’s thoughts, a radio show that predicts your fate, and a blood-thirsty ghost who refuses to let go.
Award-winning author Karmen Spiljak delivers a chilling and razor-sharp mix of twists and dark suspense, perfect for readers who like their stories to unsettle and linger.
Ten dark tales. Ten twisted fates. One thrilling collection.
My Review (5 stars out of 5)
This is the first book I’ve read by this author and like all collections of short stories, it gives an excellent introduction to her writing talents. The ten stories are all very different with dark and chilling themes and a touch of the macabre. Examples include, ‘A Celebration’, where a businessman tunes into a strangely insightful radio show that presents a no-holds-barred look at his own life. In ‘A Thousand Smiles Away’, Dana encounters some disturbing issues in a house that appears to have a mind of its own. An advertising campaign in ‘Make a Wish’ taunts its creator, throwing his own slogans back at him. However, my favourites from this collection are ‘The Feast’ and ‘Andy’. Told from the point of views of each of the participants, the host in ‘The Feast’ coaxes a series of stories from unwilling guests Dee and Finn at a dinner party that takes a strange turn. In ‘Andy’, Frederick’s plan to use AI to share some of his workload begins to impact his life and relationships in ways he’d never imagined.
Karmen Spiljak has a talent for coming up with unusual and witty stories that hark back to TV programmes like Black Mirror, The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, dishing up a host of tales with unexpected endings. If you enjoy twisted tales and creepy characters, this book will serve them up in spades.
Author Bio
Karmen Spiljak is Slovenian-Belgian author of suspense, horror and speculative fiction, a developmental editor and a book coach. Her short fiction has been awarded and anthologised. Her short story collection, Add Cyanide to Taste, won the 2022 IndieReader Discovery award for best short stories/Fiction and Pass the Cyanide won the 2023 Wishing Shelf Book Awards Bronze.
She lives in Belgrade with her husband, two mischievous cats and an undefined number of literary characters. Find out more about her writing on www.karmenspiljak.com .
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Colin Garrow 