Making Connections discussion

Genre: Dark Fantasy/SF/H, Short Stories
Page Count: 220

Book Description:
Rise Up collects two dozen short stories that span nearly thirty years of C.S. Fuqua's career, featuring ghosts and faeries, the macabre and mundane, rich and poor, and distraught and jubilant. From the dark fantasy of "Rise Up" and science fiction comedy of "The Garbler" to the science fiction satire of "Big Daddy's Fast-Past Gadget," each story in Rise Up explores the motivations, actions, and consequences that force ordinary people to become extraordinary. Rise Up's stories intertwine good and evil and how we waver between condemnation and redemption: the cold-heartedness of a president in "All the Brave Soldiers," the pity of a ghostly girl for a dying general in "Grace," modern society's propensity for foolish restrictions in "The Addict." The title piece, "Rise Up," explores second chances when a mandolin player uses music to resurrect his fiancée following her tragic death, only to bear even greater tragedy in the long run. In "Demons," an Iraqi War veteran suffering PTSD mines the depths of compassion when he befriends a phooka, tortured and starved to the brink of insanity. Evil comes in many guises, from the man who saves children from life's heartaches, to the mechanic who grossly overcharges clients for unneeded repairs, to the politicians who deceive countries into war to torture and maim in the name of a plethora of gods. Sometimes we recognize evil's approach; sometimes we don't. Rise Up explores the consequences.


Genre: Dark Fantasy/SF/H, Short Stories
Page Count: 216

Book Description:
Descend into a world of dark and light, a world in which karma is real. The 35 stories collected here explore the motivations of the human spirit, the qualities that lead us into temptation as well as deliverance, that make even the most ordinary among us extraordinary. In "Walking After Midnight," a Year's Best Horror Stories selection, a man sinks in self-pity as he drives home in a snowstorm after a long day's work, his wife recently deceased, his son a casualty of war decades before. In the swirling snow, he swerves to avoid a man at the edge of the road. The truck flips and fatally injures the driver, but he won't die alone. In "Contrition," a car strikes an aged Japanese man, slamming him to the ground, but he shakes off the impact as though nothing's happened. Weary of cheating death, he meets a woman at a war shrine honoring men he knew and fought with. She looks familiar, and she should. She died with countless others, tortured to death under his unit's command. Now she's come for him. In "Mama's Boy," another Year's Best Horror Stories selection, screams in the night lead a young boy to a house where he discovers a young man crippled by battle injuries and trapped in the tormenting care of his aged, dying mother. In the title story, "Trust Walk," a college student, depressed over the loss of her lover, participates in a class activity designed to explore faith and security but learns that the only ones completely trustworthy are dead.

Be one of the first 5 to sign up below in order to receive a free copy of this ebook to read and review! Please post your reviews on Goodreads, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble if applicable.

Formats available: PDF, ePub, Mobi

All reviews should be completed and posted within 6-8 weeks of receiving your copy of the ebook.

Leave us your name, email address, and format

Reviewers: