A short collection of delicious horror stories!
Title: Five Slices of Death
Author: Kendall Giles
Praise:
You took the lessons of “Stabbing for Dummies” [a story in Dr. Arnzen's 100 Jolts: Shockingly Short Stories
] to a new level in your winning entry.
A Dessert Worth Waiting For
In Five Slices of Death, author Kendall Giles neatly presents five short stories related to death and dying. To prepare the reader for a foray into this uncomfortable landscape, Mr. Giles provides an introduction discussing the fascination human beings have with fear and death and its emotional roots.
The stories themselves hook the reader in immediately, touching upon such morbid themes as being buried alive, love that persists beyond the grave, a modern ferryman on the River Styx, and art that goes beyond the limits of the avant garde. The writing is terse and elegant, decorated just enough to clearly convey the scenes and settings without intruding on the reader’s experience. I read the volume twice and still found the writer’s style slick and entertaining during the second reading.
To top it off, like a finely placed dollop of whip cream, the writer provides a recipe at the end of the book for Cherry Pie.
The book left me wanting to read more, and my hope is that next time Mr. Giles presents us with an even baker’s dozen to go along with these five fine slices.
Description:
Five haunting short stories. One cherry pie recipe. Five Slices of Death.
Five Slices of Death is a collection of five short stories about death, each a distillation of some emotional reaction death may cause in us. The stories in this book are meant to cast a bit of light into the shadows of one of our most basic and elemental fears, to provide an opportunity for introspection and perhaps even alarm, as well as simply to entertain. Each story strives to reach some emotional, philosophical, or horrific resonance with the reader. Each story is, in its own way, a commentary on life.
The titles of the included stories are: “My Life, Dimly Lit,” “Searching,” “The Toll of Technology,” “How to Say Goodbye,” and “A Delicate Touch.” These are not long tales—some are quite short, but they are nevertheless potent.
Two stories in this collection have received honors:
- The story, “A Delicate Touch,” won the Raw Dog Screaming Press 100 Jolts Retrospective Writing Contest, in 2010.
- I was invited to read the story “Searching” at the Think Small Micro Fiction event, a part of a biennial international miniature invitational exhibition at the artspace gallery in Richmond, Virginia, in 2011.
But lest these stories run too dark and macabre, as an antidote a mouthwatering cherry pie recipe is also included, so that the reader can enjoy a slice of solace along with a slice of death.
