Tell My Sorrows to the Stones

By Christopher Golden

ChiZine Publications 2013 

Review by Mario Guslandi

Best selling novelist and editor Christopher Golden’s collection “Tell My Sorrows to the Stones”  provides undisputable evidence of how good that author is also in creating effective and gripping short fiction..

Among a number of excellent stories, some are especially worth mentioning.

“All Aboard”, more a Twilight Zone tale than a ghost story, portrays a desperate mother mourning her deceased kid and getting gradually estranged from real life.

“Put On A Happy Face” is a dark, unsettling piece set in the world of circus clowns, where laughing and horror go closely together, while the claustrophobic “Breath My Name” effectively depicts the hard and dangerous life of miners.

In the splendid, perceptive “The Art of the Deal” a man forced to sell his Company gets an exquisite, unusual reward  and in the compelling “Thin Walls” we enjoy an intoxicating mix of graphic horror and hot sex.

“Mechanisms”(a collaboration with Mike Magnolia) is a superb supernatural mystery where a young man endeavours to trace his missing father.

The outstanding “The Secret Back of Things” represents a disturbing journey into the ugliness of the secrets hidden inside the human heart while the atmospheric “Nesting” discloses the horrors surrounding strange ruins in the woods.

Finally “Quiet Bullets” is a riveting, moving story where a lonely kid learns from a ghost cowboy how to use a gun and shoot another terrible, darker ghost trying to get into the house.

Golden is a terrific storyteller and this is a terrific collection not to be missed by any true lover of dark, classy fiction.