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Moonlight Sonata
These are the dark, ethereal stories of Moonlight Sonata. Tales bound to disturb your sleep and chill your heart; a new collection from the award-winning author of Setting Suns and Nocturne Infernum.
All that can kill you is what you carry with you:
Imagine a haunted church, where the ground has turned sour and something walks in the shadows at night to the mournful hymns.
A silent covered bridge that no one dares to cross.
Angry spirits that cry out from beneath the ground of a cemetery that will not lie still.
An ageless man bound in love to a mortal woman, forever moving, forever haunted.
A police officer chasing a suspect into the woods - and suspects they are no longer alone.
A woman preparing to leave her husband, watched by unseen eyes in the corner of the room.
A voice that can speak only through a radio, a voice from beyond death itself.
A man haunted by an ageless face that brings tragedy to his life whenever it appears.
A girl whose imagination carries her beyond the point of no return in a future where dreams become reality - and so do nightmares.
All that can kill you is what you carry with you:
Imagine a haunted church, where the ground has turned sour and something walks in the shadows at night to the mournful hymns.
A silent covered bridge that no one dares to cross.
Angry spirits that cry out from beneath the ground of a cemetery that will not lie still.
An ageless man bound in love to a mortal woman, forever moving, forever haunted.
A police officer chasing a suspect into the woods - and suspects they are no longer alone.
A woman preparing to leave her husband, watched by unseen eyes in the corner of the room.
A voice that can speak only through a radio, a voice from beyond death itself.
A man haunted by an ageless face that brings tragedy to his life whenever it appears.
A girl whose imagination carries her beyond the point of no return in a future where dreams become reality - and so do nightmares.
296 pages, Hardcover
Published February 6, 2017
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About the author
Elizabeth Donald
27 books39 followersElizabeth Donald is a dark fiction writer fond of things that go chomp in the night. She is author of the Blackfire urban fantasy series and Nocturne vampire mystery series, as well as other novels, novellas and stories in the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres. She is a three-time winner of the Darrell Award for speculative fiction and finalist for the Prism, Imadjinn and Knost awards, and more recently received the Mimi Zanger Award for fiction. She is the founder of the Literary Underworld small-press cooperative; an award-winning journalist and essayist with more than 25 years in journalism; a nature and art photographer; freelance editor and writing coach. She holds a masters degree in media studies and MFA in creative writing from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and teaches journalism and English composition at several St. Louis colleges. She serves as president of the St. Louis Society of Professional Journalists and vice president of the AWP Adjunct Writers Caucus, and is a member of the national SPJ Ethics Committee, Association of Writers and Writing Programs, Authors Against Book Bans, Authors Guild, and more writing and trade organizations than is healthy. She lives with her family in a haunted house in Edwardsville, Illinois. In her spare time, she has no spare time.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 31, 2019
Collection of (mostly) horror short stories, some truly disturbing, some simply fun, all intriguing.
From the backroads hell of "Infinity" to the creeping paranoia of "Safe" there is a lot of darkness here. The extremely disturbing nature of "The Sheriff of Nottingham" is enough to overcome some of the logical stretches the story takes, and "Run Rabbit Run" does a great job of using creepy atmosphere to build terror out of a simple situation that gets creepy quickly.
There are also a couple of science fiction entries here. "Polaris" has a Star Wars vibe to it, while "Saving Melanie", the least-dark (it still involves the threat of a pretty terrifying fate for a character) story in the collection, has great characters and worldbuilding in a story about, well, worldbuilding.
A couple of stories feature recurring characters that appear in some of the author's other works. These have more of an X-Files kind of flavor with ghost-hunter Cat Suarez relying on psychic ability and compassion in two of the stories, while "professional badass" Major Sara Harvey and her Blackfire team take out monsters with blades and firepower in "To Protect and Serve".
The longer tale "Gethsemane" has an atheist heroine drawn to a demonic church on unholy ground.
Throughout the collection are great characters and vivid, often unnerving, descriptions that deliver the creepiness.
From the backroads hell of "Infinity" to the creeping paranoia of "Safe" there is a lot of darkness here. The extremely disturbing nature of "The Sheriff of Nottingham" is enough to overcome some of the logical stretches the story takes, and "Run Rabbit Run" does a great job of using creepy atmosphere to build terror out of a simple situation that gets creepy quickly.
There are also a couple of science fiction entries here. "Polaris" has a Star Wars vibe to it, while "Saving Melanie", the least-dark (it still involves the threat of a pretty terrifying fate for a character) story in the collection, has great characters and worldbuilding in a story about, well, worldbuilding.
A couple of stories feature recurring characters that appear in some of the author's other works. These have more of an X-Files kind of flavor with ghost-hunter Cat Suarez relying on psychic ability and compassion in two of the stories, while "professional badass" Major Sara Harvey and her Blackfire team take out monsters with blades and firepower in "To Protect and Serve".
The longer tale "Gethsemane" has an atheist heroine drawn to a demonic church on unholy ground.
Throughout the collection are great characters and vivid, often unnerving, descriptions that deliver the creepiness.
December 28, 2018
In which Elizabeth Donald levels up.
Her first collection, Setting Suns, established her as a skilled short story writer. Moonlight Sonata shows us that she has not been idle in the intervening years. She captures characters and situations with a journalist's swift pen strokes, but never makes them feel sketchy or half-finished.
Not a book to be read at a sitting. Savor these arsenic bon bons, one at a time
Her first collection, Setting Suns, established her as a skilled short story writer. Moonlight Sonata shows us that she has not been idle in the intervening years. She captures characters and situations with a journalist's swift pen strokes, but never makes them feel sketchy or half-finished.
Not a book to be read at a sitting. Savor these arsenic bon bons, one at a time
April 23, 2017
The short stories in this collection are both horror and science fiction. All of the stories are inventive and very original. Even the horror stories contain Donald's trademark wit. I really liked that a lot of the stories have an ambiguous ending. I also really enjoyed the author's note about each story.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews